Using concept maps in mathematic: The effects on students' mathematical power

One of the fundamental factors affecting and leading the society is the education system within that society. As the relationship between the education systems and society is mutual, education systems were revised with respect to the needs and interests of individuals. A great deal of significant changes occurred in mathematics education point of view. In contrast to the traditional view, today, converting the academical skills to everyday life skills, using them in everyday life and developing thinking skills for learning how to learn much more come forward. In math education individuals are intended to be raised as people who don't memorize but question, interpret the situations which occur in everyday life, who are able to explore, who obtain and configurate their own information in a unique way and who are able to reflect the new information to their environment. Gaining the qualities which are expected from the individuals takes some mathematical power and mathematical thinking. Making individuals gain these qualities can be realized by education environments in which these individuals can improve their mathematical power and the educational materials with which they can achieve a proper learning. One of the most common ways in supporting the individuals' creativity and providing a proper learning is concept maps. The focus point of the study is inspecting the effects of applying the concept maps in maths lessons with the intention of development in mathematical power. "Pre-test-Post-test with control group model", which is one of the real experiment models, was used in the research. The study group of the research included 51 students 26 of which was a member of 8/A class and 25 of which was a member of 8/B class of Beypazarı Secondary school in 2013-2014 academic year. The school was located in Beypazarı disctrict in Ankara city. Mathematical power scale developed by Yeşildere (2006) and semi configurated interview forms designed by Ev Çimen (2008) were used in the research as data collection tools. Mathematical power scale was applied to control groups as "Pre-test – Post-test". Semi configurated interview forms were applied after the post-test to the students who were chosen among the experiment and control groups. Paired and unpaired sample t-test, covariance analysis and descriptive analysis were used in order to evaluate the data after the application. Qualitative and quantitative results of the research indicated that concept maps have positive effects on development of the mathematical power of the students. And also after some interviews, students' thoughts about components of mathematical power and open ended questions of mathematical power scale were determined. Keywords: Mathematical power, Mathematical thinking, Concept maps