Teaching Symmetry in the Light of Didactic Situations

The purpose of this study is to determine the student experiences for a lesson plan designed according to Didactic Situation Theory using Cabri-Geometry software. In line with this aim, we worked with four seventh grade students in Bursa. Within the scope of the study, students were given a black box activity involving the symmetry transformation made in the computer environment. Descriptive analysis of qualitative research methods was performed, and data were processed according to the thematic framework. The students were invited to do our black box activity. As a result they made some group discussions about their process of learning and discovering concepts and gave feedback on their experiences. All five phases of the Didactic Situations Theory have been exemplified in the findings of the study. The results showed that students could construct the concept of symmetry with its properties by means of the constructive environment prepared with the black-box activity

Different Types of Resources Used by Master Students Considering Their Thinking Styles

The aim of this research is to determine the different types of resources, regarding the thinking styles, used by mathematics teachers to create an a-didactical situation using a video-game from an essential resource. In this research embedded mixed method was used. Participants were ten teacher-student-researchers, studying at the master degree program at a university in Turkey. The data obtained is analyzed regarding thematic analysis and descriptive statistic. The assignments were analysed in three categories; teacher resources, student resources, and researcher resources. It was found that assignments were used two types of resources, namely "teacher resources" and "student resources". There were no assignments that used "researcher resources. Also, it was also found that the legislative forms, hierarchic and monarchic forms, local levels, external scopes and liberal leanings were dominant among the students. It is suggested to increase the work to put forward the researcher identities in teacher-students’ education at the Universities

Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers’ Understanding of Quadrilaterals and the Internal Relationships between Quadrilaterals: The Case of Parallelograms

This study attempts to reveal pre-service teachers’ conceptions, definitions, and understanding of quadrilaterals and their internal relationships in terms of personal and formal figural concepts via case of the parallelograms. To collect data, an open-ended question was addressed to 27 pre-service mathematics teachers, and clinical interviews were conducted with them. The factors influential on pre-service teachers’ definitions of parallelograms and conceptions regarding internal relationships between quadrilaterals were analyzed. The strongest result involved definitions based on prototype figures and partially seeing internal relationships between quadrilaterals via these definitions. As a different result from what is reported in the literature, it was found that the fact that rectangle remains as a special case of parallelogram in pre-service teachers’ figural concepts leads them not to adopt the hierarchical relationship. The findings suggested that learners were likely to recognize quadrilaterals by a special case of them and prototypical figures, even though they knew the formal definition in general. This led learners to have difficulty in understanding the inclusion relations of quadrilaterals

A research on the influences of the Covid-19 pandemic: The case of mathematics teachers’ resource systems: Influences of the Covid-19 pandemic

This study was conducted to examine in depth the influences of the Covid-19 pandemic on the resource systems of mathematics teachers. This qualitative study is based on the documentational approach to didactics and is a case study conducted with two secondary school mathematics teachers teaching in the 7th grade. The research was limited to the subject of equations and equalities. Reflective analysis was used as a data collection method in this study. The data were obtained from the participating teachers in two stages, pre-pandemic and pandemic periods. Data in the first stage, which included the pre-pandemic period; consisted of the schematic representation of resources system for the face-to-face education period of the equations and equalities subject before the beginning of the online education and the semi-structured interview conducted before the online education of the subject started. The data of the second stage including the pandemic period, were obtained through the schematic representation of resources system prepared by the teacher at the beginning of the online education, and the video and audio recordings of the lessons in which the teacher taught the equations and equalities unit in a certain class with online education during the pandemic period. In the first part of the data analysis, the data obtained from the teachers in the pre-pandemic period were subjected to content analysis and the resources systems of teachers in face-to-face education was revealed. As a result of the examination of the schematic representation of resources systems prepared by the teachers in this section for the face-to-face education period and the analysis of the interview data, two themes, "General Habits" and "Special for Face-to-Face", were reached. In the second part, the data obtained from the teachers during the pandemic period were subjected to content analysis, and the teacher's resources systems in online education was revealed and two themes were reached: "General Habits" and "Special for Pandemic". When the resources systems of the teachers for the period in face-to-face education was compared with the resources systems for the pandemic period in the third section, the change in the documentation systems of the mathematics teachers during the pandemic was also revealed in detail. The results revealed that the duration of completing the unit has changed during the pandemic period, the variety of sources used did not change, but the type shifted from printed sources to z-book applications and benefited from much more technological tools than face-to-face education