Attitudes of high school students towards visualization of mathematical content

Alihodzic, Belma and Atanasova-Pacemska, Tatjana and Nesimovic, Sanela (2024) Attitudes of high school students towards visualization of mathematical content. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 19 (2). ISSN 1306-3030

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Abstract

Teaching is a process for which its plan should contain reflection onto previous experience. With that in mind,
teaching situations should be continuously researched and improved in accordance with the research results. Led
by this thought and the fact that students are uncritically using visualization to solve mathematical problems, we
defined the aim of this research–determine the attitude of students about the visualization of mathematical
content (VMC). The subject of this research are the attitudes of students towards VMC. By analyzing our research
subject, we have discovered the research problem–students use visual aid to solve problems uncritically. Based
on this problem, we have set the aim of our research. Our aim was to determine the students’ attitudes (and their
opinions) about VMC. Based on the aim of our research, we have set four research tasks. Based on these research
tasks, we have established the main (leading) research question–What is the attitude of high school students
towards the application of VMC? We divided the main research question into five questions: Do high school
students consider that they understand the term ‘VMC’? Who considers they use more methods of solving
mathematical problems using visual aid–high school male students or female students? Students of which grades
consider that they use solving problems using visual aid more? What is the attitude of high school students about
the relationship between the substantiality of the picture (the amount of data it encompasses) and the difficulty
of solving the problem? What is the attitude of students about the use of software to solve mathematical
problems? The research has been conducted with 1,240 high school students from Sarajevo, Bosnia &
Herzegovina. For the purposes of this article, we employed a survey, questionnaire-based research. The research
was created as part of a larger study conducted in the context of preparing a doctoral dissertation related to VMC.
It is one fundamental research. An essential aspect of this research involves students’ attitudes toward VMC. After
obtaining all necessary approvals from relevant institutions and parents, students proceeded to testing and
surveying in their school classrooms, under the supervision of designated individuals who facilitated the conduct
of the research. The distribution of the data was not normal, so we used the Pearson Chi-square, likelihood ratio
Chi-square, and linear-by-linear association test to examine the association between student attitudes and
categorical variables (gender and grade). In addition, we used frequencies and percentages. It has been concluded
that the students are mostly positive towards applying visualization in their process of solving mathematical
problems and these should be used in the direction of improving the students’ success, their confidence and their
level of contentment in their mathematics class, as well as in other life situations that encompass mathematical
content. In future research, it could be examined why students expressed such attitudes about the presented
situations. Additionally, it would be significant to explore why students do not consider themselves successful in
applying VMC, despite claiming to understand the term. The analysis could extend to the content presented in
textbooks or instructional materials students use–how visualized the content is or whether students are required
to visualize it themselves. It would also be worthwhile to investigate the extent to which teachers encourage
students to visualize specific tasks or do so on their behalf. Given the fluctuation in results (we observe affirmative
answers–partially or completely) observed across grades–initial decrease, subsequent increase, followed by
another decrease–it might be explored whether this is related to the curriculum taught in each grade (such as
content, volume, number of class hours, etc.). Regarding images leading to incorrect conclusions, it would be
interesting to investigate the types of images students have in mind, how frequently they encounter such
situations, where they use these images, who creates them, and similar aspects. These are just some questions for
future research.

Item Type:	Article
Impact Factor Value:	0.6
Subjects:	Natural sciences > Matematics
Divisions:	Faculty of Computer Science
Depositing User:	Tatjana A. Pacemska
Date Deposited:	21 Feb 2024 10:15
Last Modified:	21 Feb 2024 10:15
URI:	https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/33743

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