International Journal of New Trends in Arts, Sports & Science Education

Yazarlar: Cenk Keşan, Yusuf Erkuş, Mehmet Çağlar Coşar

Konular:

Anahtar Kelimeler:Concept image,Concept of triangle,SOM,Ward’s clustering algorithm

Özet: The purpose of this study is determining the concept images of primary school mathematics teacher candidates on a geometrical concept. Tall and Vinner (1981) defined the concept image as the mental structures encoded by the person to his/her mind about a mathematical thought. The concept image of an individual for a concept develops with his/her experiences that are related and not related with that concept. The concept image is considered as an efficient method in revealing the knowledge of students on a concept and in revealing their misconceptions. With this study, the use of a new method is suggested in visualizing and modeling the cognitive structures of students on the triangle concept. The SOM (Self-Organizing Map) and Ward Cluster Analysis were used in the study to analyze the data. SOM is a specific form of artificial neural network; and during the training, non-supervised training is used. Basically, the working logic is a process that aims to simplify the problem based on reducing the multi-dimensional inputs into outputs with less size. Open-ended questions were used as data collection tools in the study in which 160 teacher candidates were included. By using the data obtained in the study, the cognitive structures of triangle concept of the teacher candidates were visualized with the SOM Method. Students' answers are transformed into numerical data by a series of operations. The data obtained is analyzed with Viscovery SOMine software. It has been seen that students are divided into 4 groups according to concept images.

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