PERCEPTIONS OF MATHEMATICS AND POSITIONING TOWARDS THE DISCIPLINE – PRE-SERVICE PRIMARY TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES IN SERBIA

Abstract

Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards mathematics and mathematics teaching might have a significant influence on their instructional practices, the quality of teaching, but also pupils’ achievement and attitudes towards the subject. Research indicates that entrants to primary teacher education programmes worldwide often have a negative attitude towards mathematics as a discipline and the teaching of mathematics as their future task. Extant studies point out that poor attitudes towards mathematics were found to be more dominant in pre-service teachers before their teacher training, but improve during the training. This paper aims to examine such attitudes and beliefs towards mathematics of pre-service primary teachers in Serbia, and give some pointers for the improvement based on the work done with Serbian teachers. We then compare our findings with those of the work done over the past decade with teachers in England. In order to investigate the pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards mathematics a quantitative research method is applied, using a scale as a measure of attitude. The findings of the study give us a basis for some recommendations for possible further improvements of the teacher training programmes in both countries. Among these, a possibility of an introduction of mathematics appreciation programme in earlier years of education is discussed, having in mind that mathematics teachers have themselves gone through educational experiences during which their attitudes towards mathematics were formed