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Teacher/Faculty Surveys

Instrument 17: Conceptions of Mathematics Inventory

Project: Enhancing the Teacher's Role in Assessment (Project EXTRA)
University of Missouri, Kansas City

Funding Source: NSF: Teacher Enhancement (ESIE)

Purpose: To measure teacher's attitudes toward mathematics and toward the teaching and learning of mathematics

Administered To: 40 grade 7 through 12 mathematics teachers from 6 ethnically diverse school districts. These teachers were participating in a 3-year professional development program to increase their assessment knowledge and skills and integrate these practices into their teaching.

Topics Covered:

  • Attitudes & Beliefs (Teacher/Faculty): academic profession, classroom management, content, methods, practical value, student understanding, teaching profession

Format/Length: 56 closed-ended, 6-point Likert rating scales that range from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree"

Conceptions of Mathematics Inventory

Name _______________________________

School _____________________________________________

District _____________________________________________________

Gender: _____male  _____female

 

We are interested in your thoughts about the field of mathematics. Your response to the following statements will help us understand how you think about mathematics. There are no right or wrong answers. Just tell us what you think.

Read each item carefully and circle the response (strongly agree, agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree) which best describes your feelings about each item. While there is no limit, do not spend too much time on any one item.
 
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree
Slightly
Disagree
Slightly
Agree
Agree
Strongly
Agree
  1. There is always a rule to follow when solving a mathematical problem.
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  1. Knowing why an answer is correct in mathematics is as important as getting a correct answer.
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  1. When you learn something in mathematics, you know the mathematics learned will always stay the same.
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  1. Learning to do mathematics problems is mostly a matter of memorizing the steps to follow.
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  1. When two students don't agree on an answer in mathematics, they need to ask the teacher or check the book to see who is correct.
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  1. Students need mathematics for their future work.
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  1. Diagrams and graphs have little to do with other things in mathematics like operations and equations.
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  1. If you cannot solve a mathematics problem quickly, then spending more time on it won't help.
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  1. While formulas are important in mathematics, the ideas they represent are more useful.
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  1. Justifying the statements a person makes is an important part of mathematics.
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  1. New mathematics is always being invented.
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  1. Mathematics has very little to do with students' lives.
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  1. Often a single mathematical concept will explain the basis for a variety of formulas.
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  1. Memorizing formulas and steps is not that helpful for learning how to solve mathematics problems.
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  1. You know something is true in mathematics when it is in a book or an instructor tells you.
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  1. When working mathematics problems, it is important that what you are doing makes sense to you.
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  1. Mathematicians work with symbol rather than ideas.
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  1. Learning mathematics involves memorizing information presented to you.
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  1. Finding solutions to one type of mathematics problem cannot help you solve other types of problems.
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  1. Mathematics is a worthwhile subject for students.
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  1. New discoveries are seldom made in mathematics.
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  1. When learning mathematics, it is helpful to analyze your mistakes.
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  1. Taking mathematics is a waste of time for students.
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  1. Mathematics involves more thinking about relationships among things such as numbers, points, and lines than working with separate ideas.
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  1. Computation and formulas are only a small part of mathematics.
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  1. It is important to convince yourself of the truth of a mathematical statement rather than to rely on the word to others.
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  1. The field of mathematics is always growing and changing.
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  1. You can only find out that an answer to a mathematics problem is wrong when it is different from the book's answer or when the instructor tells you.
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  1. Being able to use formulas well is enough to understand the mathematical concept behind the formula.
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  1. Asking questions in mathematics class means you didn't listen to the instructor well enough.
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  1. There is little in common between the different mathematical topics you have studied, like measurement and fractions.
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  1. Understanding the statements a person makes is an important part of mathematics.
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  1. Learning computational skills, like addition and multiplication, is more important than learning to solve problems.
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  1. Knowing mathematics will help students earn a living.
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  1. When you do an exploration in mathematics, you can only discover something already known.
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  1. Mathematics will not be important to students in their life's work.
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  1. Concepts learned in one mathematics class can help you understand material in the next mathematics class.
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  1. If you knew every possible formula, then you could easily solve any mathematical problem.
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  1. In mathematics there are many problems that can't be solved by following a given set of steps.
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  1. When two classmates don't agree on an answer, they can usually think through the problem together until they have a reason for what is correct.
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  1. Mathematics consists of many unrelated topics.
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  1. Sometimes when you learn new mathematics, you have to change ideas you have previously learned.
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  1. When you learn mathematics, it is essential to compare new ideas to mathematics you already know.
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  1. Mathematics today is the same as it was when your parents were growing up.
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  1. In mathematics, the instructor has the answer and it is the student's job to figure it out.
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  1. Students will use mathematics in many ways as adults.
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  1. You can only learn mathematics when someone shows you how to work a problem.
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  1. One can be quite successful at doing mathematics without understanding it.
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  1. The field of mathematics is for the most part made up of procedures and facts.
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  1. Most mathematical ideas are related to one another.
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  1. Essential mathematical knowledge is primarily composed of ideas and concepts.
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  1. When one's method of solving a mathematics problem is different from the instructor's method, both methods can be correct.
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  1. Students should expect to have little use for mathematics when they get out of school.
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  1. Students can make new mathematical discoveries, as well as study mathematicians' discoveries.
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  1. Learning mathematics involves more thinking than remembering information.
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  1. Solving a problem in mathematics is more a matter of understanding than remembering.
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