THE IMPACTS OF MATHEMATICAL REPRESENTATIONS DEVELOPED THROUGH WEBQUEST AND SPREADSHEET ACTIVITIES ON THE MOTIVATION OF PRE-SERVICE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to compare the influence of instruction using WebQuest activities with the influence of an instruction using spreadsheet activities on the motivation of pre-service elementary school teachers in mathematics teaching course. There were a total of 70 pre-service elementary school teachers involved in this study. Thirty of them were included in the group that developed WebQuests and forty of them were included in the group that did spreadsheet activities during the seven weeks of mathematics instruction. The researchers used a Likert-type questionnaire consisting of thirty-four positive and negative statements as pre-and post-tests to find out the motivational attitudes of the participants towards using technology in mathematics teaching course.  After the collection of the data, the researchers used the independent samples t-test and ANCOVA to analyze the quantitative data. The study documented that although there was a statistically significant difference found between the mean scores of the groups on the pre-test favoring the one who did spreadsheet activities, the results of the ANCOVA indicated that developing WebQuests had more positive influence on the motivation of the pre-service elementary school teachers than doing spreadsheet activities in mathematics.