Investigating explanation and justification tasks in 7th grade mathematics textbooks and workbooks in terms of learning areas

Textbooks are the mostly used resources by the teachers during lectures. The tasks in teh boks are the most important guide of mathematics teaching in schools. Explanation and justification tasks provide more meaningful learning by students' expressing their learning processes, awaring their misunderstandings and finding out other people's comprehending methods. Therefore, it is highly important for the tasks in the books to require students to make explanation and justification and they must be high level cognitive demands tasks. For this reason the aim of this thesis is to reveal the quality of 7th grade mathematics textbooks and workbooks used in Turkey in terms of explanation and justification tasks. In order to reach this aim, two textbook series which are determined by Ministry of Education in order to be used in 7th grade mathematics teaching were investigated. In the investigation, the tasks contained by the books were grouped as solved, unsolved and tasks in exercises according to 5 learning areas which are determined by Ministry of Education and chapter where they were presented. After that, explanation and justification tasks were determined by considering the cognitive demand levels which they require. The conclusions of this research show that there aren't much high level cognitive demand tasks in mathematics books. In order to provide high level meaningful learning, high level tasks should be used. For this reason, the tasks in the books should be constructed suitable for doing mathematics level which is aimed to reach.