An evaluation of fractal geometry curriculum designed for secondary school mathematics

The general objectives of geometry education can be summarized as; students should use geometry within the process of problem solving, understanding and explaining the physical world around them. Traditional geometry taught in schools consists of idealized abstractions, but the shapes of objects in nature are much more complex. A tree, cloud, mountain, flower, fern, broccoli, fire and lightning always have irregular and complex structure. Therefore, current school geometry curriculum based on Euclidean geometry is not adequately sufficient to meet the above objectives. For this reason, we need to integrate fractal geometry into current mathematics and geometry curriculums. Although teaching of fractals is started at different grade levels, a comprehensive fractal geometry curriculum was not developed yet. In this study, a fractal geometry curriculum designed for secondary school mathematics was evaluated according to the dimensions of teaching and learning of fractals. For this purpose, a fractal geometry curriculum was developed and used 39 pre-service mathematics teachers during the six weeks. Data gathered through semi-structured interviews, clinical interviews and fractal geometry written exam.After implementations, the purposes of fractal geometry curriculum were achieved by the vast majority of the pre-service teachers. But, the program that not provided the desired success in the teaching of fractal dimension and chaos game. According to the results, some recommendations were made for researchers and educators.