Examination of seventh grade students knowledge construction process on the subject of central tendency measures

The aim of this research is to examine the knowledge construction process to the RBC + C model of the concept of abstraction, also known as the transition process from concrete to abstract, regarding the issue of central tendency measures of seventh grade students. The study was conducted in a public secondary school in Dilovası district of Kocaeli province. The study group was composed of two students with high mathematics achievement levels, two students with medium achievement and two students with low mathematics achievement levels were selected, Open-ended practice questions chosen for the research were prepared in a style by revealing the intellectual processes of the students. In addition, expert opinion was sought to ensure the validity and reliability of the questions. Since the research is a case study which is one of the qualitative research methods; student answer sheets, observation notes, transcripts of the interviews and voice recordings given to the application questions were used as data collection tools. While analyzing the student responses, the cognitive actions of the RBC + C abstraction model were taken into consideration. The study was examined in two sub-problems. Firstly, it was examined how the seventh grade students with different levels of mathematics achievement formed the knowledge about central tendency measures. Secondly, the differences between students with different mathematics achievement levels were analyzed. As a result, it was observed that students with high mathematics achievement were able to create knowledge, while one of the students with medium mathematics achievement could create the information, the other did not, and students with low mathematics achievement could not perform abstraction. It was observed that students with high mathematics achievement performed abstraction faster and more comfortably than the students with middle mathematics achievement level. While the students abstracted the concepts, in some cases they obtained the same results by following different ways. It was observed that students with low mathematics achievement were unable to perform abstraction due to lack of prior knowledge and whether they remembered or not used previously formed concepts. It has been noticed that guiding teacher questions and, in some cases, giving hints help the student in the process of creating information.