The Effect of Peer Instruction on Conceptual and Operational Approaches Preferred in Problem Solutions

Abstract

The level of using conceptual and operational knowledge is of great importance in the problem-solving process. The previous studies on the measurement of conceptual and operational knowledge, have been, especially examining the problem solutions or in discussing the views. On the other hand, rich learning environments should be established to overcome such difficulties in teaching mathematics in general and analytical geometry in particular. In this study, the researchers provide useful information to the literature since this study aimed to examine quantitatively, whether the peer instruction in analytic geometry has any effect on the conceptual and operational approaches of secondary school mathematics teacher candidates in problem solving. The sample of the research is composed of (including 22 females, and 1 males) secondary school mathematics teacher candidates. Considering the advantages of technological resources on learning, the learning management system (LMS) designed by the second author, was used during the question-answer process. Before the application, the course content was integrated into the online learning management system (LMS). The teacher candidates were divided into groups before the application. In this research, the first group will be presented in the context of the research problem. In the first group, the scores of the prospective teachers who wanted to use the second right to answer were not reduced. Conceptual & Operational Approach towards Problem-Solving scale, developed by Özyıldırım Gümüş and Umay (2018) was used as the data collection tool. One of the two options is conceptual and the other one is the operational. Thus, it is possible to decide on approaches from the responses. Since the value of this approach could be related with the data set, the cut-off point was determined by the ROC curve method in SPSS program and the data were analyzed descriptively by the reference to this cut-off point. It has been determined that the secondary school mathematics teacher candidates display a conceptual knowledge-based approach through peer instruction.