Are the Primary School Teachers of the Future Ready to Solve the Word Problems without Algebra?

The aim of this study is to investigate future teachers' skills that can make problem solving methods concrete for 7-11 year old students. For the students in the concrete operations level, solutions of word problems should also be taught by concreting. But most of teacher candidates can not solve the problems without algebra because they got used to solve the word problems with algebra during their high school and university education. In this study, whether the teacher candidates have the skills of solving the primary school level problems without using algebra or not are being observed. At the end of this observation it is determinated that primary level teacher candidates generally prefer using algebra operations because of their former habits. The results show that in the education of the primary level teacher candidates, there is the need of developing the solving skills using figures and diagrams without algebra rather than algebraic solutions in word problems.