The effect of teaching trigonometry presented in constructivist approach on high school second year students' attitudes and success

This research has been conducted in order to display the effect of trigonometry teaching by using the approach of constructivism on the High School 2 students? attitudes and success. The study group is composed of 50 students chosen randomly from the city of Denizli, Lütfi Ege Anatolian Teachers High School. The socio-economic levels of students are taken into consideration so that they can be equal. The data used in the research are collected through the `Success Test? and the ` Attitude Scale? developed by the researcher. When the `Success Test? was being developed, first of all the related questions on the subject of trigonometry were prepared. The prepared test were applied on students chosen randomly, analyses were realized, and the alfa factor has been found 0.888. Moreover, the questions which are thought to be unsuitable were taken out of the test, the necessary corrections were done and the test was ultimately prepared. The prepared test was applied on both the subject and control group students. T-test has been done on the obtained data with the help of SPSS 11.5 pocket programme, and meaningfulness of 0.05 level was reached. At the end of the research, the mathematics lesson on trigonometry by using the constructivism method was shown to have no difference from the point of view of the cognitive and emotional perspectives of students. Not a meaningful difference was reached between the attitude scores of students and the pre-test and final test scores. Moreover, the subject students were observed to be curious and excited, however the control group students were to be passive. As a result , although the statistical data are not against the constructivism method, the literature examination of the researcher and his observations show that the approach of constructivism is more effective than the traditional methods used.