Perspectives of elementary school teachers and their students about relating and contextualizing in mathematics

Evidence suggested that students who were successful in mathematics turned out to fail in real problems in everyday life. This may be due to the lack of building relationships between mathematics and real life. The new curriculum in Turkey recommends building relations both in the field and among the fields with a similar approach. In this sense, revealing the conceptions of both the learners and teachers about relating and contextualizing was found to be significant. In this context, to identify the conceptions of the 6th grade teachers and their students about relating and contextualizing a case study was executed. Consequently, the examples given by the students were found to be generally generated under the themes of school, profession and real life. The teachers and the students were found to lack sufficient knowledge in contextualizing. These statements were sometimes very ordinary and occasionally not well articulated. The examples delivered by the students were found to be very similar to those of their classmates and teachers. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved