Understanding of Eight Grade Students about Transformation Geometry: Perspectives on Students’ Mistakes

Abstract

People need the idea of transformation geometry in order to understand the nature and environment they live in. The teachers should provide learning environments towards perceptual understanding in symmetry training and development practice skills of the students. In order to make up such a learning environment, teachers should have information about the mathematical structure of the concept of symmetry, the difficulties the students encounter while learning, misconceptions and the causes. Therefore, the challenges and the common mistakes the 8^th grade middle school students encounter about the transformation geometry was analysed in the study. The study was conducted using mixed method designs with 125 8^th grade students. At the end of the study, it was observed that the students understood that the translation transformation is a movement of replacement, but they had difficulty in the topics such as the direction of the transformation and the position of the shape within the transformation. A misconception was developed for the reflection by confusing the similarity with the congruence property of the shapes. It was detected that the students had difficulty in identifying the equation of the axis of symmetry for the images of the shapes under reflection, confused the rule that the points intersecting with the symmetry of the shape within the reflection should intersect with the image under transformation and they made mistakes since they couldn’t explore the relationship between symmetry axis in regular polygons and sides. They had problems in finding and practicing the angle of rotation about rotational transformation and also. In the study, learning environments were recommended towards overcoming these challenges for teachers and coursebook writers and improving conceptual information and the skill to practice these concepts.