Browsing by Author "Naski, Janica"

The goal of this thesis is to find out how the readymade exercises in the teachers mathematical guide supports the different phases of concept formation in the learning of multiplication. In mathematics, the concept formation consists of three phases; concrete strategies, mental strategies and the automated concept mastery. The teacher's guide that was analyzed in this thesis is Tuhattaituri 2a by Otava publishing. In addition to the analysis of the teacher's guide, the research was conducted through interviews of teachers that had the Tuhattaituri teacher's guide in use. The interviews were conducted in order to find out how the teachers make use of the teacher's guide in the teaching of multiplication and if they are possibly using other materials in addition to the teacher's guide. Five female class teachers from the Helsinki metropolitan area were interviewed for the research. They all had over 10 years of experience as class teachers. The interviews were conducted as themed interviews. The themes were: the uses of the teacher's guide in the teachers own teaching, the student's exercises in the book and the use of other material in teaching. The teacher's guide and the interviews were analyzed through theory based content analysis. The exercises in the teacher's guide were classified based on what part of the concept formation they support. The analysis frame of the interviews was formed based on the themes of the theme interviews. The research found out that Tuhattaituri teacher's guide has many exercises that support the formation of concrete strategies. Also exercises supporting the automated concept mastery could be found in small extent. There were no exercises supporting mental strategies in the teacher's guide. The ways the teachers made use of the teacher's guide varied. Some of the teachers used more digital materials that they had used to replace the exercises in the teacher's guide. All teachers used other materials in their teachings in addition to Tuhattaituri. Two of the teachers did not use Tuhattaituri in their own teaching almost at all because they felt that Tuhattaituri doesn't teach multiplication in a logical order.