An investigation of 10th grade students’ proof schemes in geometry with respect to their cognitive styles and gender

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Date

2007

Author

Ören, Duygu

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The purpose of the present study is to identify 10th grade students’ use of proof schemes in geometry questions and to investigate the differences in the use of proof schemes with respect to their cognitive style and gender. The sample of the study was 224 tenth grade students from four secondary schools. Of those, 126 participants were female and 98 participants were males. Data was collected at the end of the academic year 2005-2006 through uses of two data collection instruments: Geometry Proof Test (GPT) and Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT). GPT, included eleven open-ended questions on triangle concept, was developed by researcher to investigate students’ use of proof schemes. The proof schemes reported by Harel and Sowder (1998) were used as a framework while categorizing the students’ responses. GEFT developed by Witkin, Oltman, Raskin and Karp (1971) was used to determine cognitive styles of the students as field dependent (FD), field independent (FI) and field mix (FM). To analyze data, descriptive analyses, repeated measure ANOVA with three proof schemes use scores as the dependent variables and a 2 (gender) x 3 (cognitive styles: FD, FM, FI) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with three proof schemes use scores as the dependent variables was employed. The results revealed that students used externally based proof schemes and empirical proof schemes significantly more than analytical proof schemes. Furthermore, females used empirical proof schemes significantly more than the males. Moreover, field dependent students used externally based proof schemes in GPT significantly more than field independent students. Also, field independent students use analytical proof schemes significantly more than field dependent mix students. There was no significant interaction between gender and cognitive style in the use of proof schemes. The significant differences in students’ use of proof schemes with respect to their gender and FDI cognitive style connote that gender and FDI cognitive styles are important individual differences and should be taken into consideration as instructional variables, while teaching and engaging in proof in geometry and in mathematics.

Subject Keywords

Elementary or Public School Education., Secondary Education.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12609109/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17400

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

D. Ören, “An investigation of 10th grade students’ proof schemes in geometry with respect to their cognitive styles and gender,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2007.