Teaching Experiment Experience Based on a Mathematics Education Research

Abstract

Teaching-experiment studies are considered as a separate class under qualitative research methods, and they have been employed increasingly more in research on mathematics education since early 2000s. Teaching-experiment design is practical and useful as it provides the researchers the opportunity to get involved in students’ cognitive process. This research aimed to share the experiences of researchers with the teaching-experiment method in the context of a doctoral study conducted in mathematics education. Within the scope of this study, the properties and elements and significance of the teaching-experiment method for research on mathematics education were addressed primarily. Subsequently, the interaction of researchers with school-administrators, teachers, students and parents in their natural environment throughout the teaching experiment besides the prejudices and affective experiences of students in the course of the teaching experiment were elicited. Finally, researchers made several inferences and recommendations based on the experiences they acquired in the course of teaching experiment. Hence it is suggested that the experiences of researchers addressed in this study would be useful for researchers of mathematics education to employ teaching-experiment method in getting to know middle-school students, managing the teaching-experiment process from beginning to end, and taking measures against contingencies