A comparative examination of high school transition system (LGS) mathematics questions and 8th grade mathematics textbooks unit evaluation questions within the framework of "Connection skills"

The aim of this study is to compare the mathematics questions in the Transition System to High Schools (LGS), which is one of the central exams for transition to secondary education institutions, with the questions in the 8th grade mathematics textbook distributed by the Ministry of National Education and the alternative textbook of a private publishing house, which is frequently used by teachers, revealing their similarities and differences. For this purpose, the questions discussed were analyzed within the framework of 'connection skills' in order to determine what type and how often they contain connections. Document analysis method was used as the research model. The data source of the research is LGS questions, the 8th grade textbook of the Ministry of National Education (MEB) publications, and the unit evaluation questions in the alternative textbook of a private publishing house. According to the data obtained from the study, the types of connection skills were included at a higher rate in the questions belonging to the private publishing house, and it was seen that they were similar to the LGS questions. Less correlations were found in the textbook of MEB publications compared to the others. In all three cases, it was determined that the most connection was 'connection with real life', while the least connection was ' connection with different disciplines'. While the category of 'connection with different disciplines' was not found in LGS, connection as included in all categories in both textbooks. While connection skills were observed in each question in the textbook of the private publishing house, no connection skill was found in only 1 of 47 questions in LGS and in 43 of 104 questions in the textbook of MEB publications. As a result, the findings reveal that LGS and the textbook belonging to the private publisher (B) are at a similar level in terms of connection frequency, but the textbook (A) of the MEB publisher is insufficient.