Evaluation of elementary preservice teachers' conceptual and procedural knowledge on circle and disc

The aim of this study is to examine the students' level of conceptual and procedural understanding for circle and disc among elementary pre-service teachers. An instrument is used to measure conceptual and procedural blow t edge on circle and disc on sample of 158 participants. Independent t- test, MANOVA test and descriptive statistics were used to analyze data. The results show that students have significantly more success on questions about procedural knowledge than about conceptual knowledge. However, this success is insufficient for both procedural and mostly conceptual knowledge considering the mid-point of the range. Finally, senior students' total achievement is significantly better than freshmen's. Descriptive analysis of conceptual knowledge questions suggests that the students either misunderstood basic concepts, their relations, the meaning and development of formulas, or don't conceptualize at all. However, they are incompetent to abstract, generalize, or transfer the knowledge to other domains, as well as solve problems with squared numbers or algebraic expressions.