engleski

"What is Geometry for you?" Draw a picture." Young students' understanding of geometry revealed through drawings

In the past several decades, the proportion of geometry has been reduced in many national curricula over the world. The reason for this was the temptation to increase the coverage of other mathematical disciplines within school mathematics. Additionally, for many years the geometry curriculum worldwide has been somewhat of an eclectic mix of activities, which may have also contributed to the increased coverage of other mathematical content areas at the expense of geometry. These developments raise a question concerning geometry competencies that students acquire in mathematics education. This question is particularly important in early grades as this is an important period for the development of geometric thinking, but also with respect to building a basis for later geometry acquisition. The study presented in this paper focuses on the analysis of young students’ understanding of geometry by using drawings and a semi-structured interview. For this purpose, we used the adaptation of Wittmann’s model of seven fundamental ideas of geometry as a theoretical perspective which includes geometric forms and their construction, operations with forms, coordinates, spatial relationships and reasoning, measurement, geometric patterns, geometric forms in the environment, and geometrization. The participants were 248 Croatian elementary students (grades 2 to 4). This age group was chosen as this is an important period for the development of geometric thinking. The students were given a blank piece of paper with the assignment to draw what geometry for him/her is. The analysis of their drawings was conducted with respect to the adapted Wittmann’s model, and supplemented with the data from interviews. In this way, the authors gained an in- depth insight into school geometry in Croatia through students’ eyes. The results revealed that elementary students have a rather narrow picture of geometry. Specifically, the fundamental idea of geometric forms and their construction dominated in the students’ drawings regardless of the grade level. These results raise issues regarding re-questioning the primary mathematics curriculum requirements concerning the multi-dimensional nature of geometry.

Drawings ; fundamental ideas ; geometry education ; primary grade education

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