Effects of Dynamic Geometry Software on Students’ Geometric Thinking Regarding Probability of Giftedness in Mathematics

Abstract

Gifted students have potential to improve countries and this potential can be revealed and developed in schools where they spend most of their times with other regular students. However, these classrooms have some limitations for them; hence, they need some differentiated activities. Usage of dynamic geometry in mathematics lessons could be an opportunity to provide differentiated activities. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore effects of mathematics lessons integrated with dynamic geometry activities on students' van Hiele geometric thinking levels controlling their probability for mathematical giftedness. Participants of the study were fifty-three fifth graders from a private school in Marmaris, Turkey. These students were grouped in terms of their probability of mathematical giftedness. Seven dynamic geometry activities about properties of line segments, triangles and quadrilaterals were developed and implemented in classrooms with tablets. Van Hiele geometric thinking level test was administered to the participants as pre-test and post-test. Results showed that dynamic geometry activities help students to move from geometric thinking level about recognizing shapes with visual clues to higher level about geometrical properties of shapes, namely relationship among shapes and their properties. Moreover, interaction between their probability for mathematical giftedness and improvements in geometric thinking levels were found. This study may contribute both to the gifted education and mathematics education fields by exploring the improvements in geometric thinking level and differentiated opportunities for gifted students. As a suggestion, a more comprehensive experimental study with larger samples so as to obtain generalize the findings could be conducted as a further study.

Keywords

• Mathematically gifted
• Mathematics education
• Dynamic geometry activities
• Geometric thinking levels

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