| This study investigated elementary school teachers' and junior high school teachers' knowledge of problematic elementary topics, specifically fractions, subtraction, perimeter and area, and estimation. The purpose of this study was to identify the participating teachers' mathematical beliefs and their understanding of the problematic topics, as well as to determine how the teacher would teach or reteach these topics to students, and to compare the strategies of teachers with varying teaching experience.;A mixed-method approach, including a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews, was implemented. The survey was used to gather information from as many participants as possible to obtain a broad analysis of confidence levels pertaining to mathematics. Forty-nine participants, including 24 elementary school teachers and 25 junior high school teachers, reported being confident in their ability to teach elementary mathematics topics. The survey also determined how well the participants understood these topics by asking them to solve certain problems and approached they would use in teaching or reteaching a concept to a student. Forty-nine participants completed the survey. The goal of the qualitative interviews was to obtain further insight into how teachers would approach these topics. A total of five participants agreed to follow up interviews including three elementary school teachers and two junior high school teachers.;The results from both the surveys and the interviews indicate that teachers have a procedural understanding of the aforementioned topics, given that they were able to use standard algorithms to solve problems. However, the findings indicate that teachers were unable to identify alternate approaches to finding solutions indicating a lacking comprehension of conceptual understanding and instead preferring a procedural approach.;The experience levels of teachers did not influence teaching practices. This study compared novice teachers and their experienced counterparts and did not find differences in responses. This shows that a procedural preference persists and conceptual understanding does not develop even through experience.;In general, the teachers demonstrated procedural understanding with little conceptual understanding. At both grade levels, they relied on algorithms and procedures to teach and reteach these topics to their students. |
