Difficulties of Prospective Elementary Mathematics Teachers' Regarding to Reflection Symmetry

The purpose of this study is to investigate the misconceptions of primary mathematics teachers on symmetry concept. The participants of the study consist of 28 teacher candidates studying in fourth class of Primary Mathematics Teaching at Kocaeli University during the fall semester of the 2012-2013 academic years. The data of this study which has the characteristics of descriptive research were obtained by open-ended test prepared by the researchers. At the end of analysis of the data, it is seen that the majority of teacher candidates cannot identify the concept of reflection and they have tried to identify by using the concept of symmetry which is often synonymous with the concept of reflection. On the other hand, it has been observed that they neglect the image is the reverse which is obtained as a result of the reflection. It can be said that they do not have the correct definition as a response to the questions asked about the symmetry axis. In general, it has been seen that they use the phrase of "it is a line that divides an object to two equal parts" for the symmetry axis. It has been also seen that the vast majority of teacher candidates have an answer that parallelogram is a symmetrical shape and there are four symmetry axes and they give the wrong answer. Finally, it has been observed that they cannot give satisfactory answers when they are asked whether they are symmetric or not.