Investigation of the change in secondary students' understanding of the prism and pyramid conceptions as a result of activity-based education

This study was carried out to examine the effect of activity-based learning on 8th grade students' comprehension of prism and pyramid. The research was carried out in a middle school in Iznik, Bursa in the academic year of 2021-2022. Thirteen (7 girls, 6 boys) students participated in the study. The research was completed with the implementation of 9 prism-pyramid activities, which were designed before, in 18 class hours for 9 weeks. The research has a mixed design and its quantitative dimension was carried out using a single-group pre-test-post-test experimental design. The quantitative data of the study were collected with the Prism and Pyramid Test developed by the researcher and analyzed with the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test since the number of participants was small. In addition, in the qualitative aspect of the research, the findings obtained from the semi-structured pre-interview and post-interview questions were divided into categories for prism and pyramid, and the categories were examined with the criteria of giving examples, drawing a net, defining and distinguishing prism and pyramids.According to the findings obtained from the research, it was concluded that activity-based learning was effective in developing 8th grade student' understanding of prism and pyramid. Despite the imrovement in test scores and defining what a prism/a pyramid is, İt was observed that the students still had difficulties in drawing the nets of these solids.