The Strategies Used by Prospective Primary School Teachers in the Process of Problem Solving: The Case of Routine Problem Solving

The study is aimed to reveal the statuses of prospective primary school teachers relevant to problem solving processes in general sense, it is actually aiming to determine the strategies they use in this process. The study had been realized qualitatively by 126 participants studying at third grade of primary school teaching department of a state university’s faculty of education. The data, obtained through the examination of the solution of a routine problem directed to them, has been analyzed descriptively under stages by the problem solving process of Polya. The results indicate that they are generally using the strategy of guessing and checking, systematic listing and using equations which are incompatible with primary school order whereas; some of them prefer the strategy of reasoning and using diagrams.