Investigation of proportional reasoning skills and attitudes towards mathematics lecture of middle school 6th, 7th, and 8th graduate students on some variables: Gender and class level perspective

In this study, it was aimed to determine the levels of proportional reasoning skills of the students in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades of middle school according to their gender and grade levels.In addition, the attitudes of the 6th, 7th and 8th grade students towards mathematics lecture were examined.Furthermore, relationship between proportional reasoning skills and attitudes towards mathematics lecture of middle school 6th, 7th, and 8th graduate students was investigated. The sample of study were consisted of the 6th grade (n = 50), 7th grade (n = 159) and 8th grade (n = 146) students who were attended in the government school during 2015-2016 academic year in Bursa province which is one of the big cities of marmara region.As a data collection tool; proportional reasoning test, which is quantitative, and mathematics attitude questionnaire were applied to the students by the researcherIn order to understand whether the students' attitudes towards mathematics lecture. It is only a factor which may be attitude or interest, the mathematics attitude survey which created by taking advantage of the PISA 2003 project was performed. In continuation of this,the proportional reasoning skill test developed by Akkuş and Duatepe Paksu (2006) was used to measure the proportional reasoning skills of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students in the middle school.Obtained quantitative data was analysed with spearman correlation coefficient, shapiro-wilk test, mann whitney U test, kruskal-wallis test. The results indicated that students' proportional reasoning skills were below the average values. When examined according to gender factor, it was seen that the scores of female students were found to be statistically higher than the male students. There is a statistically significant difference between the total score and the proportional reasoning skill of the students who have different grade levels. On the other hand, there is no statistically significant difference between the qualitative comparison and qualitative comparison dimensions among the students studying at different grade levels. According to another data obtained in the research scope, there is no statistically significant difference on attitude scores towards mathematics lecture between male and female students. The attitude of students in different grade levels towards mathematics lecture statistically decreased significantly from 6th grade to 8th grade. In addition, When relationship between 6th, 7th, and 8th grade middle students' proportional reasoning skills and their attitudes towards mathematics lecture wasexamined, statistically positive relationship was detected.