Secondary School Students’ Meaning and Learning of Circle Geometry
Date
2014-09-05
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to understand and gain insight into the types of meanings secondary school students hold in learning circle geometry, the role these meanings play in students’ learning of circle geometry concepts, the role of formal instruction in shaping and reshaping these meanings, and the implications for teaching geometry. Meanings, framed in a constructivist perspective, are interpreted as the students’ ways of making sense of the concepts learned and the formal instruction is interpreted as the instruction that students experience in their regular classrooms on topics of circle geometry based on the curriculum and teaching approaches used by the teacher.
A qualitative case study approach is employed, with data sources consisting of pre- and post-intervention interviews to capture students’ meanings, a contextual circle geometry task to capture meanings through problem solving, and classroom observations of the sessions on the circle geometry unit to capture the nature of the instruction and students’ participation in it. The participants are 20 students from a single Grade 9 mathematics classroom. Data analysis involves a thematic approach based on coding the data to identify students’ meanings and the impact of the instruction on them.
Findings indicate that the students held several pre-instruction meanings that were influenced mainly by their real-world experiences and prior learning of school geometry. Many of these meanings did not reflect the mathematical meanings of the concepts or support problem solving involving contextual circle geometry problems. While the formal instruction resulted in positive changes in these meanings, for the most part the post-instruction meanings were focused on definitions of the concepts and applications to contextual circle geometry problems in an instrumental way. The findings suggest that students’ pre-instruction meanings provide a basis for their learning of new concepts and could impact this learning both positively and negatively, so it is important for teachers to consider and unpack the students’ initial meanings when introducing new concepts. The study contributes to our understanding of these meanings and how they should be dealt with in teaching and learning of geometry and mathematics teacher education, with implications for further research.
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Keywords
Education, Education--Curriculum and Instruction, Education--Mathematics, Education--Secondary, Education
Citation
Oladosu, L. O. (2014). Secondary School Students’ Meaning and Learning of Circle Geometry (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27723