Evaluation of secondary school 7th and 8th grade mathematics coursebooks according to PISA basic mathematics skills levels

The aim of this research is to determine the distribution of secondary school 7th and 8th Grade mathematics coursebooks according to PISA basic mathematics skills levels. PISA basic mathematics skills include six skills: communication, devising strategies, representation, using symbols, mathematizing, reasoning and argumentation. Document review, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used as model for this research. The documents analyzed for this research consist of 7th Grade (Gizem Publishing) and 8th Grade (Öğün Publishing) Course books which were used during the 2017-2018 Academic Year. 7th and 8th grade mathematics coursebooks were divided into two main sections: content and assessment and evaluation in the research. Level distributions of six skills, which are defined as PISA basic mathematics skills, were analyzed one by one in these two divided sections. Each basic mathematic skill was categorized between the level 0 and level 3. As a result of the research, when the gaps between the levels of basic mathematics skills were analyzed, it was seen that level 0 and level 1 questions are dominant in terms of all six skills in 7th and 8th Grade mathematics coursebooks. Furthermore, it was indicated that level 3 questions in all skills were rarely included in terms of subject distribution. Within this context, the necessities of including the questions for improving basic mathematic skills, expressing the questions in a more comprehensible and interpretative way can be discoursed. Keywords: PISA, 7th and 8th Grade mathematics coursebooks, basic mathematics skills