Van Hiele Level of Geometric Thinking among Secondary School Students

Abstract

Geometric thinking plays an important role in geometric achievement. It is also important in other fields, such as architecture, engineering, film, science, graphics, and arts. However, in Indonesian education curriculum, teaching and learning geometry does not emphasise the geometric thinking skills. Several studies revealed that Indonesian students could not come out from the lowered zone of the International exam, such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which caused by van Hiele levels of geometric thinking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the van Hiele levels of geometric thinking among secondary school students in Makassar, Indonesia. A total of 298 respondents randomly took part in this study. The van Hiele geometric thinking test was used to assess the student's level of geometric thinking. Data were in ordinal form analysed according to the weighted van Hiele geometric thinking test scores presented in the table. The findings showed that most of the students were at the lowest level of geometric thinking. Several 123 and 93 respondents were at Level 0 (Visualisation) and Level 1 (Analysis), respectively. Meanwhile, 70 respondents were lower Level 0 and only a few respondents were in the upper Level 1. The result might be used as a fundamental source to produce a learning strategy in elevating van Hiele levels of geometric thinking.