Designing activities related to the history of mathematics for secondary school students and analysis of student reflections on these activities

This study seeks to design activities related to the history of mathematics for the 6th, 7th and 8th grade secondary school students and to assess the impact of the mathematics teaching based on these activities on the students' attitudes towards the history of mathematics, including their attitudes, motivation, and general knowledge towards Mathematics Courses That Include Information on the History of Mathematics, as well as on their attitudes towards mathematics. It also aims to analyze the opinions of the mathematics teachers who carried out the teaching process with the students. To that end, this study employs embedded design, which is one of the mixed research methods. It further uses quasi-experimental design with a pre-test and post-test control group as the primary design and case study as the secondary design. For the experimental design of the study, two classes from the 6th, 7th or 8th grade students in a secondary school were randomly selected, one for the control and the other for the experimental group. After that, 9, 10 and 12 activities related to the history of mathematics were designed for use in the experiment respectively for the 6th graders, 7th graders and 8th graders. The design of these activities was based on the student outcomes for the first semester in mathematics course at the 6th, 7th and 8th grade level. For the experimental part of the study, the data were collected through the SA-MCHM (Scale of Attitude towards Mathematics Courses That Include Information on the History of Mathematics), the SM-MCHM (Scale of Motivation towards Mathematics Courses That Include Information on the History of Mathematics) and the SA-HMGK (Scale of Attitude towards the History of Mathematics as General Knowledge) designed by the researcher. The researcher made observations during the experiment. Following the experiment, four students randomly selected from each experimental group and the teacher who carried out the experiment were interviewed about the use of history of mathematics and the obstacle against the use of history of mathematics in courses. For the analysis of the quantitative data, different statistical analyses were performed depending on whether the parametric test assumptions were met or not. Content analysis was employed for the analysis of the qualitative data. The results of the study reported a significant difference for the experimental group in the total scores that the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders obtained from the SA-MCHM and SM-MCHM. The study further reported a significant difference in the total scores obtained from the SA- HMGK only in the 7th graders as well as another significant difference in the total scores in attitude towards mathematics only in the 6th graders. The study concluded that the activities related to the history of mathematics had a positive impact on enhancing student attitudes and motivation towards mathematics courses. The students stated in the interviews that the history of mathematics help their learning, that activities were fun and effective in their positive attitude towards the course, that different methods allowed for learning to take place and expanded their perspectives. It also found out that the activities related to the history of mathematics were useful in overcoming the obstacles in the process where the teachers help the students to incorporate the history of mathematics into mathematics course. In the interview, the teacher emphasized the lack of time to use the history of mathematics during the courses and lack of material for the secondary school level as well as inadequate education on the history of mathematics for teachers. It can be thus argued that activities related to the history of mathematics are important both in facilitating student learning and in enabling them to develop positive opinions towards mathematics.