The awareness of difficulties in solving rational inequality and a solution proposal

Abstract

This research aimed to determine the difficulties that the students experience in inequality solutions that contain inequality in general and rational (proportional) expressions, and to solve these difficulties with an activity. Totally 108 students, who were enrolled in the Department of Mathematics and Science Education, consisted respectively of 43 in the 2015-2016, 32 in the 2016-2017, and 33 in the 2017-2018 academic year, participated in the research. It was started with an activity to make students realize the difficulties they experienced and become aware of the stages which they had difficulty. After the activity, the difficulties, and the stages that students had difficulties were determined. At that point, they were informed about the solutions for the difficulties they faced and shown a road map for coping with the stages they had difficulties. At the end of the research, the rational inequality questions were asked to the students in the mid-term and/or final exams, and it was observed that the majority of students did not experience any of the problems which they had experienced before the activity. Another result of the study was that the students had less difficulty in the inequalities related to the concept of greatest integer, which they received only in university education.