An investigation of middle school mathematics textbooks' inclusion of multiple representations

The current study aimed to determine representation types that were preferred in the questions and the ones that were required in their answers; to reveal the transitions among the representations; to analyze distribution of these representations in terms of content areas that were defined in the mathematics teaching program and grade levels. Being qualitative in nature, the current study has been conducted as document analysis. The analysis of the textbooks employed verbal, algebraic, graphical, model, table and real life representations. Results indicated that algebraic representation was the most preferred representation type in the middle school mathematics textbooks. Verbal representations were included almost half of the representations that were used in the textbooks. Moreover, model representations were in the third place in terms of the representation types that were preferred in the middle school mathematics textbooks. On the other hand, table, graphical and real life representations were quite low in percentage coverage in the textbook questions. The results of the study also indicated that transitions among representations mostly occurred as transiting from algebraic, verbal and model representations to algebraic, verbal, model and the open representations, while the remaining possible matches were quite low. Moreover "numbers and operations" and "algebra" content areas mostly included algebraic representations whilst "geometry and measurement" questions have utilized model representations. In addition, verbal and model representations were the ones that were preferred most across the grade levels, while table, graphical and real life representations were quite rare in the textbook questions in different grade levels.