Analysis of the relationship between mathematics teacher candidates’ reflective thinking levels and their philosophical views on the nature of mathematics

Abstract

The main aim of the present study with relational screening model was to analyze the relationship between reflective thinking skills and philosophical views regarding the nature of mathematics (NoM) in secondary school mathematics teacher candidates. In addition, it was aimed to determine whether the reflective thinking levels of the candidates displayed a significant difference according to absolutist, mixed, and semi-experimentalist groups. The study group consisted of 196 secondary school mathematics teacher candidates studying in the mathematics teaching program in the spring semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. As data collection tools, The Scale for Determining Philosophical Views Regarding the NoM and The Scale for Determining the Level of Reflective Thinking were used. In the analysis of the data, in addition to descriptive statistics, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient and multiple linear regression analysis were employed. In the study, it was determined that both reflective thinking levels and the philosophical views regarding the NoM were found to be high in mathematics teacher candidates. Besides, it was determined that there was a positive and moderate relationship between the reflective thinking level subdimensions and and the philosphocial views on the NoM in the teacher candidates, and that the variables of the reflective thinking level subdimensions explained 44% of the variance in the philosophical views on the NoM. Moreover, it was concluded that there was a statistically significant difference between the semi-experimentalist group and the mixed and absolutist groups in favor of the semi-experimentalist group in terms of critical reflection, reflection and understanding skills, and between the absolutist group and the mixed and semi-experimentalist groups in favor of the absolutist group in terms of habitual actions subdimension.