Graphic literacy skills and challenges to secondary school students: Pie graph example

In this study, it is aimed to examine the graphic literacy skills of secondary school students with the example of pie graph, and to determine the difficulties they face in reading and interpreting the pie graph. For this purpose, pie graph literacy skills were defined at three levels: reading data, reading between data and reading beyond data. In order to evaluate these skills, a total of 10 multiple choice or open-ended pie graph questions were prepared. The study was conducted with 8th grade students in a public school in Tarsus district of Mersin in 2018-2019 academic year. Mixed research method was used in the study. Applications were made by clinical interview technique and the findings of the research were presented both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings of the study indicated that the students had no difficulty in reading the data in general, that the mathematical preliminary information and processing skills were used at the reading level between the data forced the students, and in the reading level beyond the data, it was difficult for the students to explain the relationships in the graphs and determine the most appropriate graph type to represent the data.