The aim of this study is to examine the views of primary school mathematics teachers on mathematical modelling. This study, in which phenomenological design has been used, has been conducted with the participation of 11 primary school mathematics teachers in Erzurum city center. The data of the study have been obtained via the semi-structured interviews made with the teachers and in-class observations made with four teachers following these interviews. Upon the analysis of the data, it has been found out that the teachers, who have been interviewed and observed in the class, do not have enough knowledge about the mathematical modelling; also confuse the concepts of model, modelling, mathematical model and mathematical modelling; and do not sufficiently use the mathematical modelling in their courses.

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The purpose of this study is to reveal the concept definitions and examples of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers regarding sets. In this context, students' formal definitions, personal definitions and examples in sets were investigated. Concept of equal sets, subsets, union, intersection, compliment, and difference were considered as basic concepts of sets in this study. The participants of the study consisted of 79 freshmen studying in the department of elementary mathematics teacher training at a state university of Turkey. The study adopted qualitative research approach and is a sample of a case study. The data of the study was collected from Definition Knowledge Form for Sets and unstructured interviews. The results of the study indicated that most of the pre-service teachers had difficulty in giving notational definitions and daily-life examples while they gave successfully verbal definitions of the basic concepts in sets. It was revealed that verbal definitions, notational definitions, prototype examples with schema, symbols and operational properties were parts of some pre-service teachers' concept images. Furthermore, some pre-service teachers confused equal sets with equivalent sets and difference with symmetric difference. They also did not consider the universal set in defining the compliment. It was found that most of the preservice teachers had difficulty in expressing their thoughts using mathematical language throughout the study.