Supervisors info:
Δέσποινα Πόταρη, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Μαθηματικών, Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Summary:
Mathematics textbooks are an integral part of school reality in primary and secondary education by providing a teaching tool that determines what, when, when, and how to teach mathematical knowledge. In Mathematics Education Research, textbooks are dynamically related to the learning opportunities of students. In this study, I attempt to investigate the provided learning opportunities for elementary students, in terms of geometric transformations and especially isometries (translation, reflection and rotation). In particular, I will explore the learning opportunities offered to students through the analysis of school textbooks from the UK, Canada and Cyprus. The analysis will refer to the geometric transformations tasks, which will be studied on the basis of their cognitive demands, the encouraged mathematical reasoning skills and finally the type of context in which they are integrated. It should be noted that the study of geometric transformations is of research interest not only from a mathematical point of view, but also due to the dominant position they have gained in modern curricula. At the same time, the selection of textbooks was made on the basis of the diversity of the adopted teaching approaches and the heterogeneity of the objectives of the curricula on which they were based during their writing. Methodologically for the analysis of the school manuals, the mathematical activity (tasks) used in the introduction, exploration, application or enrichment-extension of the mathematical content taught, is adopted as the analysis unit.
Keywords:
geometric transformations, learning opportunities, textbooks, mathematical tasks, cognitive demands
