Middle School Students' Line Graph Skills and Affective States about Common Graph Types Used in Science Courses

Abstract

This study investigated the graphing skills and some affective states of middle school students about graphs by their gender, grade level, and the common graph types used in science courses. Participants’ line graph skills, self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes toward graphs, and their personal literacy perceptions about different graph types (line, bar, and pie) are explored quantitatively. Qualitative data was collected about the views of participants about graphs in general, as well as about the factors that impact students like/dislike certain graph types. Based on the findings, while participants were found to lack line graph skills, they were found to hold high self-efficacy beliefs and positive attitudes toward graphs. No significant difference among the dependent variables was found based on gender; however, grade level and graph type variables were found to impact students’ graph skills and personal graph literacy perceptions. Among the commonly used graphs in middle schools, a vast majority of students favored bar graphs, mostly due to the simplicity of them, and disliked pie charts, as finding them difficult to draw.

An Analysis of the Statistical Literacy of Middle School Students in Solving TIMSS Problems

“…In teaching mathematics, representation is of prominent to present as for the major topic, the mobilized knowledge in multiple representation, symbolization, to grasp abstract subjects, and one of the standard curriculum. The evidence shows that the low level students can benefit from the use of representation, symbols, such as graphs and lines in the area of TIMMS (Mainali, 2021;Turan & Matteson, 2021;Bursal & Polat, 2020;Grønmo, Lindquist, Arora & Mullis, 2015;Provasnik et al, 2012).…”

“…Literacy can be stated as the ability to read and write, and is often related to counting or arithmetic (Permatasari, 2015;Suragangga, 2017;Irianto & Febrianti, 2017;Bursal & Polat, 2020). Literacy is also stated as the ability of a person in understanding, utilizing, interpreting, and reflecting written text in order to achieve necessary objectives (Bernardo-Hinesley, 2020;Harsiati, 2018;Indah, Mania & Nursalam, 2016;Keefer & Haj-Broussard, 2020).…”

“…TIMSS was designed to broadly harmonize mathematics and science curricula in participating countries. The evaluation basis of TIMSS is classified in two domains, which are the content domain and the cognitive domain, and are inescapably related to the curricula that apply in each country (Rumiati & Wardhani, 2011;Budiharso & Tarman, 2020;Bursal & Polat, 2020). The content domain is composed of the four categories of numbers, algebra, geometry, and data and probability, while the cognitive domain is composed of knowing, applying, and Waters & Hensley, 2020).…”

“…Students are expected to not only possess the abilities to read, understand, and count, but also to think critically and to reason logically (Bursal & Polat, 2020;Solikhah & Budiharso, 2020a). Mathematical abilities also involve the identification, understanding, and processing of information in order to be followed with making the right decision for solving a problem.…”

“…In the field of mathematics instruction, there is currently a hot discussion on statistical literacy; however, this topic has not yet been researched further (Martadiputra, 2002;Bursal & Polat, 2020). Study results have illustrated that globally, the skills of statistics, reasoning, and thinking among junior high school students still International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology (IJEMST) 183 need to be considered more seriously for a more meaningful learning of statistics (Hafiyusholeh, 2015).…”