Determining 6th grade students' difficulties in drawing, reading, and interpreting graphs about motion constant speed subject

Purpose: The main aim of the conducted research is to determine the difficulties encountered by 6th-grade middle school students about the subject of motion with con-stant speed in the science curriculum when it comes to graph drawing, reading, and inter-pretation. Within the scope of this study, in addition to addressing the fundamental prob-lem, the investigation also encompasses identifying the challenges encountered by stu-dents in reading, drawing, and interpreting line-column graphs, as well as examining the difficulties students face in interpreting and drawing distance-time and speed-time graphs for constant motion. Method: In the conducted study, the special case methodology (case study) was employed. A total of 187 students, who were in the 6th grade during the 2022-2023 aca-demic year in a private school affiliated with Istanbul province, participated in the study. Since all participating students were enrolled in the researcher's institution, the study utilized convenient sampling technique. Within the scope of this research, a two-stage graph reading and interpretation test containing questions related to motion with constant speed was developed. All questions were originally designed by the researcher. The first stage of the test includes multiple-choice questions; while the second stage in-cludes open-ended questions aimed at collecting qualitative data for the study. The open-ended questions require students to articulate their own definition of speed, explain speed based on a given example, interpret speed-time and distance-time graphs, convert given situations into tables, and draw the distance-time graph of the moving object based on the given situation. In the first stage of the test development process, the draft scale was presented to experts for their opinions, and necessary adjustments were made. Before the implementa-tion of the test, which consists of a total of 18 questions, including 12 multiple-choice questions and 6 open-ended questions, ethical committee approval and permission from the private school where the researcher works were obtained. All applications related to the research were conducted on 6th and 7th-grade students studying in a private school in Istanbul. The pilot application of the Motion with Constant Speed Graph Reading and Interpretation Test was conducted on a randomly selected total of 120 students in the 7th grade at this school. After the application, the data obtained were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis using SPSS 26.0 package program, and normality tests (Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk) were calculated to test the normal distribution. According to the test results, Questions 2, 3, 4, and 8 were found not to have a normal distribution and were excluded from the study. For model reliability, Cronbach's Alpha and KR 20 tests were applied to the data along with the questions in their sets. To assess the difficulty and discriminability of the open-ended questions in the draft test, an evaluation was made in a class where the actual application did not take place. As a result, it was decided to include all 6 open-ended ques-tions from the draft in the actual application. In both the KR-20 and Cronbach's alpha tests, consistent results were obtained, and the final version of the test consists of 14 questions, including 8 multiple-choice and 6 open-ended questions. The final version of the test was administered to 187 sixth-grade students studying in the same school. Results: In the application, the 8 multiple-choice test questions were evaluated as correct, incorrect, or blank. As for the open-ended questions, they were assessed accord-ing to the criteria in the prepared rubric to identify the difficulties students faced in draw-ing, reading, and interpreting speed-time and distance-time graphs. The reliability calcula-tion for the test used in the pilot study was performed using the SPSS 26 software, result-ing in a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.626. After removing the 4 questions, the reliability calculation for the test used in the study was recalculated using the same program, and the Cronbach's alpha value was found to be 0.774. This value indicates a high level of relia-bility for the test. The average correct response rate for students in the multiple-choice questions was 83.42%, while the average correct response rate for open-ended questions was 74.08%. Conclusion and Suggestions: In solving multiple-choice questions, it is ob-served that 6th-grade middle school students are more successful compared to open-ended questions. These students' skills in reading and interpreting graphs are observed to be more advanced than their skills in reading and interpreting line graphs. It is evident that students face challenges in expressing the definition of speed using the words distance and time. Students seem to struggle more when drawing graphs related to constant speed motion compared to reading the given graphs. Additionally, it is observed that students encounter difficulties in scaling when representing data on graph axes. It is determined that expressing the motion of an object with constant speed on a graph after its movement has ceased is particularly challenging for students. Simultaneous implementation of Math-ematics and Science curriculum objectives is believed to positively contribute to strength-ening students' skills in reading, interpreting, and drawing line graphs from an early stage, starting as early as the 7th grade in Mathematics class. A section related to interpreting speed-time and distance-time graphs of objects with qualitative acceleration, independent of data, can be included in the Force and Motion unit to enhance students' graph reading and interpretation skills.