The effect of origami based instruction on the 8th grade students' triangle unit academic achievement and attitudes toward geometry

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the instruction based on origami activities in triangles which is included in eight grade mathematics curriculum on students? academic success and their geometric attitudes. In addition, interviews were conducted with students in order to determine students? attitudes towards origami art, instruction based on origami activities in teaching geometry, and to determine the difficulties they experience while doing origami activities. The study is conducted with control and experiment groups which are in two different schools located in Devrekani town of Kastamonu city in 2011-2012 academic years. Total of 65 students were involved in the study, in which, 33 of them were in experiment group and 32 of them in control group. In the study, experiment group students were subjected to instruction based on origami activities while students in control group were subjected to activities in the teacher?s book published by Ministry of National Education (MONE-MEB). As a method, mixed method that combines both the qualitative and quantitative research methods. The design of the research in this study is pretest-posttest control group quasi-experiment design. For the quantitative data of the study, both the ?triangle achievement test? and ?geometry attitude test? were applied. For the qualitative data, students were expected to respond to the interview form with open-ended questions that was prepared by the researcher before. The content analysis was used for data analysis. The data analysis for achievement test revealed that there was a significant difference on behalf of experiment group students who received geometry instruction which was based on origami activities. On the other hand, the data analysis for geometry attitude test revealed no significant difference between experiment and control group students. In addition, it was found that there was a medium level positive relation between students? post-attitude scores and post-achievement scores. Moreover, the results of the interviews with students about geometry instruction based on origami activities revealed that students developed positive attitudes toward art of origami and origami activities. Students indicated after the instruction that they would like to endeavor with the art of origami in their future lives. On the other hand, they stated that they sometimes experienced difficulty in folding papers while dealing with the activities applied.Key Words: Origami, Triangles, Elementary Mathematics Education, MathematicsEducation