Elementary Teachers’ Beliefs About Using Manipulatives and Outcome Expectations In Teaching Mathematics

This study was conducted to aim at determining: elementary school teachers’ views on the use of mathematics manipulatives, the extent of their manipulative usage in teaching mathematics, and the relationship between their beliefs and frequencies of their manipulative use. The study sample consists of 232 elementary school teachers and 39 elementary mathematics teachers in the city of Erzincan. An instrument which is composed of open-ended and semi-structured questions and Likert-type questionnaire was used in the study. Descriptive, comparative and correlational analyses were conducted. Even though teachers’ beliefs about using manipulatives were very high, no significant relationship was found between the frequencies of their manipulative use, and their beliefs about using manipulatives in teaching mathematics.