Pre-service Teachers’ Attitudes to Mathematics and Teaching Mathematics

Teachers’, especially pre-service teachers’, attitudes –not only toward the subject of mathematics, but also toward the teaching of mathematics – are important because a meaningful relation exists between attitudes to teaching mathematics and the formation of positive attitudes to mathematics among pupils. Furthermore, attitudes at the beginning of teaching careers are important and to predict future attitudes. The purpose of the study is to determine the attitudes to mathematics and teaching mathematics of pre-service teachers. In the study, the questionnaire "Teaching Mathematics" was used to gather information. A total of 254 pre-service teachers from primary school and preschool streams were examined in order to determine the effect of a number of independent factors, such as program, gender and age, on total attitude score. The results revealed that pre-service primary education teachers have more positive attitudes towards mathematics than pre-service pre-school teachers. But there is no significant no differences were found between preschool and primary school teachers’ attitudes towards teaching mathematics. On the other hand, male candidate teachers have more positive attitudes towards both mathematics and teaching mathematics than female candidates. Finally, various suggestions were presented for future studies in accordance with the findings obtained