Investigating the effects of concrete materials and the Geometer's Sketchpad supported training on the achievement and explanations about the solutions of mathematics education students

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effects of Concrete Materials and The Geometer?s Sketchpad supported training on the achievement and explanations about the solutions of mathematics training students. In the study quasi-empirical method was used and the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data obtained from pre-test and post-test were done. The participant of the study consisted of 139 day and night group mathematics education students in the Gaziantep University. SM (Concrete Materials) and GSP (Geometer?s Sketchpad) supported traninings lasted 10 weeks and included activities to develop students? geometric thinking. The data of the study obtained from the geometry achievement test which was done before and after the SM and GSP supported trainings. There was an investigation on whether the students? explanations on open-ended geometry problems changed after the training and whether there was any difference between the explanations of the SM and GSP groups. The findings showed that the students had difficulty in providing explanations and making justifications but at the end of the training there was an increase on their success and convincing explanations. On the other hand quantitative analysis findings showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the explanations of the SM and GSP groups. In addition it was seen that there was a progress in providing justifications, making generalizations and creating convincing mathematical expressions. The study showed that students needed environments equipped with different materials which allow then to think more and defend their ideas.