Investigation of the effect of technology-supported affine geometry teaching on mathematics teacher candidates' attitudes toward analytical geometry, geometric thinking levels and academic achievement

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of technology-supported affine geometry instruction on the attitudes, van Hiele geometric thinking levels, and academic achievements of prospective mathematics teachers. The study initially conducted a process to develop an attitude scale to determine the attitudes of prospective mathematics teachers towards analytic geometry. The process of developing the attitude scale was carried out with prospective primary school mathematics teachers studying at education faculties of state universities in two different cities in the Aegean Region. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, a 25-item, 5-point Likert scale attitude scale, in line with relevant literature, was obtained to determine the attitudes of prospective mathematics teachers towards analytic geometry. This research is an experimental study, employing quantitative research methods. The study group consists of 74 teacher candidates enrolled in the second grade level of the primary school mathematics teaching department at a state university in Izmir during the 2022-2023 academic year, divided into two separate classes. The study group was determined using purposive sampling as a non-random sampling method. A 5-week affine geometry instruction was conducted with the experimental and control groups. The data for the research were collected through pre-test and post-test applications of the test measuring attitudes towards analytic geometry and the van Hiele geometric thinking levels test, as well as a post-test for determining academic achievements. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS 25 program. The analysis of the research data revealed that technology-supported affine geometry instruction did not lead to a significant difference in attitudes among prospective mathematics teachers, but positively influenced their van Hiele geometric thinking levels and academic achievements. Although there was no significant difference in attitudes towards analytic geometry between the experimental and control groups, a statistically significant positive difference was detected in the pre-test and post-test attitudes of students in the control group, albeit at a low level. In the analyses comparing the relationships between the dependent variables of the research, a low positive correlation was found between the attitudes of prospective mathematics teachers towards analytic geometry and their geometric thinking levels. The results indicated no significant relationship between attitudes towards analytic geometry and academic achievements, while a low positive relationship was found between geometric thinking levels and academic achievements.