Open AccessIdentifying students’ understanding of missing angles in parallel lines: a case study of year 7 students in The United Kingdom
Author(s) -
S Soma Salim
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/1321/2/022102
Subject(s) - interview , memorization , mathematics education , computer science , psychology , pedagogy , sociology , anthropology
This study aims to identify students’ understanding of missing angles in parallel lines by considering what is arbitrary and what is necessary. Data were collected from observing a lesson in a year 7 classroom about the role of angles in parallel lines and interviewing the students to identify their understandings. The results reveal that there are three levels of students’ understanding: (1) the students can remember arbitrary things, but not be aware of the missing angles; (2) the students can remember arbitrary things and sometimes can be aware of necessary things, but get confused when solving a different problem; (3) the students can remember arbitrary things, can be aware of the missing angles although the problem is different from what they usually do, but they do not remember the terms introduced by the teacher during the lesson. It is suggested that teachers have such skill to identify if their students can memorize what is arbitrary and be aware of what is necessary, to assist their students’ memories and to help to educate their awarenesses.