A COMPARISON OF THE MATHEMATICAL PROCESSES EMBEDDED IN THE CONTENT STANDARDS OF TURKEY AND SINGAPORE

This study compares Turkey's and Singapore's mathematics content standards in terms of the highligthed mathematical processes. A mathematical processes framework was employed to analyze the content standards drawing on the standards for mathematical practice defined by the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The standards for mathematical practice include make sense of problems and persevere in solving them, reason abstractly and quantitatively, construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, model with mathematics, use appropriate tools strategically, attend to precision, look for and make use of structure, look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. The data sources are 2013 mathematics curriculum standards of Turkey and 2013 mathematics syllabus of Singapore for grades 7 and 8. Data analysis revealed that the two countries reflected mathematical processes differently in their content standards. Some mathematical processes are not identified in Turkey's content standards while all mathematical processes are observed in Singapore's content standards. The distribution of the observed mathematical processes are also different in the two countries. Suggestions for future content standards revisions are shared in the paper.