Investigation of the Geometry Problems Posed by Secondary School Students Requiring Proportional Reasoning

Abstract

This study aims to examine the geometry posed problems of secondary school eighth-grade students for proportional reasoning situations. A case study was applied for data collection. The participants were selected by adopting the criterion sampling method from the purposive sampling method. The study participants, which was carried out in the second term of the 2021-2022 academic year, consisted of twenty-five eighth-grade secondary school students attending a state secondary school in Kadıköy, Istanbul. A 6-question geometry problem-posing test was used to collect the study's data. A semi-structured interview was used to learn the students' opinions about their problem-posing situations. The data obtained from the problem-posing test were analyzed according to the study of Güveli (2015). The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed using the classification of Miles and Huberman (1994). According to the study results, much more than half of the problems posed by the students were geometry problems involving proportional situations. It has been observed that the problems posed by the students are non-complex problems frequently encountered in textbooks and can be associated with daily life.