Determining the misconceptions of secondary school 7th grade students about operations with rational numbers and overcome with conceptual cartoons

The aim of the research is to eliminate the misconceptions seen in 7th grade students about operations with rational numbers through conceptual and descriptive cartoons. This research was carried out in a public school in the Edremit district of Van in the academic year of 2021-2022. In this context, the participants of the research are 7th grade students (N=51) who receive education and training in the selected school. In this study, in which mixed method was used, the quantitative part is based on the pre-post test with a single group, and the quantitative data are those obtained from the readiness and pre-post test of identifying misconceptions in the operation with rational numbers. Qualitative data consists of semi-structured interviews, reflective diaries and interviews with students. Quantitative data, conjugate-pair sample t-test, inductive content analysis method were applied in the analysis of qualitative data. The data collection tools of the research were "Readiness Test", "Misconceptions Determination Test in Operations with Rational Numbers", "Concept Cartoons", "Reflective Diaries", "Semi-structured Interview Forms" and individual interviews developed by the researcher. The data of the research were collected in about 3 months. As a result of the data analysis, it has been determined that the selected sample group has various misconceptions related to the subject in operations with rational numbers, in the expression of the operation whose modeling is given, and in problems that require operations with rational numbers. It has been determined that the misconceptions experienced by the students are partially eliminated with concept cartoons and that the rate of occurrence of some of the misconceptions in the students is decreased. Concept cartoons are effective in completely eliminating the misconceptions of "Seeing the result as a natural number by adding the numerator and denominator in the same fraction", "Getting the inverse according to the multiplication operation in reverse according to the addition operation" and "Divide the numerators and write the denominator to the denominator after equalizing the denominators in division". has been. In addition, during the application of concept cartoons in the classroom, it was determined that the students were motivated towards the lesson and their interest in the mathematics lesson increased.