Exploring the Ninth-Grade Students to Solve Similar Triangle Problems: Case Study

• Main Authors: Tseng, Po-Yu, 曾伯宇
• Other Authors: Yang, Rei-Tzu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/eg5hhn

碩士 === 臺北市立大學 === 數學系數學資訊教育教學碩士學位班 === 105 === This research studies the case studies of ninth grade students in solving similar triangle problems. The research objects are two students in the same class study at a public secondary school in the new North City, Taiwan. They have different degrees of achiever, say, in high and middle. The research was first conducted by a pre-test question, which assesses how these two participants will approach a similar triangle question. And then through the main questions to observe the high achiever and the middle achiever in the use of similar nature to solve similar triangle problem performance and differences. During the test, we have recorded our participant’s written notes, process of tackling the problem and finally given them an individual interview in order to study the reason that causes performance difference. The result shows the high achiever are biased towards procedural understanding rather than conceptual understanding when approaching similar triangle problems, whereas the middle achiever cannot remember the nature of meaning correctly. Not only the latter lacks of the conceptual understanding but also procedural understanding. In terms of different approaches use by two participants and performance differences in solving triangle similar problems, the high achiever can use her own concepts for the similarity of triangle and understand the integration of key information with the subject, in a structured and contextual way to solve problems. But sometimes she tries to solve the problem in a wrong way; The middle achiever, however, tends to rely on the subject information and past memories. He struggles in explaining the process clearly. If the question has high complexity, it is relatively difficult for the middle achiever, and sometimes even fails to be solved. This paper suggests lecture can be delivered by explaining the principle details, reasoning concepts and give more examples, which help students develop their problem-solving strategies and skills. Due to the reason that this study does not adopt ZPD to help students solve the problem, future works can be done in this area or studying students in different grades and themes.