Preservice Mathematics Teachers’ Personal Figural Concepts and Classifications About Quadrilaterals

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine preservice mathematics teachers' personal figural concepts and hierarchical classifications about quadrilaterals and to investigate the relationships between them. The participants were 57 preservice primary mathematics teachers in their senior year at a state university in Turkey. The preservice mathematics teachers were administered a questionnaire that consisted of 13 questions extracted from studies on the descriptions and images of quadrilaterals, identification of quadrilateral families among given images, and identification and classification of the relationships between quadrilaterals. The results showed that the preservice mathematics teachers' knowledge of quadrilaterals learnt at primary-secondary school level and prototypical images were dominant in their personal figural concepts. Also, the teachers didn't use the hierarchical definitions of quadrilaterals and were not able to establish relationships among quadrilaterals due to the effect of prototypical images in choosing a family category among the given images. On the other hand, the majority of the participants gave correct answers to the questions about the dual relationships among quadrilaterals. The study concluded that although the preservice teachers possessed formal definitions of quadrilaterals, their prototypical images affected their personal figural concepts.

6. Sınıf Öğrencilerinin Dörtgenler Hakkındaki Geometrik Muhakeme Süreçleri

“…Alan yazın incelendiğinde (farklı okul türü, sınıf düzeyi veya başarı seviyesindeki) öğrencilerin (Fischbein ve Nachlieli, 1998;Fujita, 2012;Güven ve Öztürk, 2014;Güzeller, 2018;Karpuz vd., 2014;Mariotti, 1992;Özkan ve Bal, 2017;Ubuz, 2017;Ubuz ve Üstün, 2004) ve öğretmen adaylarının (Erdoğan ve Dur, 2014;Horzum, 2018;Kozaklı Ülger ve Taban Broutin, 2017;Türnüklü, Gündoğdu Alaylı ve Akkaş, 2013) geometrik şekiller üzerindeki muhakeme süreçlerini ele alan birçok çalışmanın bulguları ile bu çalışmanın bulgularının paralellik gösterdiği anlaşılmıştır. Karpuz vd.…”

Early Geometrical Thinking in the Environment of Patterns, Mosaics and Isometries

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“Books I Used as a Child were Mathematically Incorrect”: Reasons to Use Children’s Shape-Related Books as a Resource to Improve Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching

“…Many PSTs and in-service teachers have difficulties with 2D shape knowledge at the secondary and elementary school levels (Millsaps, 2013;Pytlak & Swoboda, 2017;Tsamir et al, 2015;Van der Sandt & Nieuwoudt, 2003). Such difficulties are due to the dominance of visual level reasoning based on prototypical images (i.e., those images memorized through frequent exposure) without considering properties (Fujita, 2012;Millsaps, 2013;Ozdemir Erdogan & Dur, 2014;Pytlak & Swoboda, 2017).…”