An investigation of 8th-grade Turkish students’ performance on number sense

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to examine the number sense performance of 8th-grade Turkish students. In this study, the students’ performances on number sense were also examined in terms of gender, school location, parents’ education level, maths achievement, perceived student satisfaction with the maths teacher, perceived importance of maths and perceived parental support for maths. Participants of this study consisted of 306 eighth-grade students (13- to 14-year-olds) from the western part of Anatolia in Turkey. The data were collected via the ‘Number Sense Test (NST)’ consisting of 38 multiple-choice questions and six number sense components. Data were analysed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 17.0. The results from this study revealed that most of the students performed poorly on the number sense test and its components. No significant difference was found between female and male performances in number sense, but their performances significantly differed according to school location and parents’ education level. The results of this study also indicated that a significant positive correlation was between the number sense performances of students and their maths achievement, perceived student satisfaction with maths teachers, perceived importance of maths and perceived parental support for maths.

KEYWORDS:

• Eighth-grade students
• number sense performance
• maths achievement
• gender
• perceived parental support

Supplementary material

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Credit authorship contribution statement

Osman Birgin: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - Review & Editing

Elif Seval Peker: Conceptualization, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Formal Analysis, Writing-Original Draft Preparation

Acknowledgments

This study is derived from the second author’s Master’s thesis. This study is also an extended version of the paper presented at the 4th International Symposium of Turkish Computer and Mathematics Education held on 26–28 September 2019 in Cesme, Turkey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Osman Birgin

Osman Birgin is a professor of mathematics education at the Department of Mathematics and Science Education in Usak University, Turkey. His research interests include conceptual learning in mathematics, computer-assisted instruction, mathematics teacher education, and alternative assessment methods.

Elif Seval Peker

Elif Seval Peker is a mathematics teacher at the 31 Agustos Middle School, Usak, Turkey. She also is a doctoral student at the Mathematics Education Program of Usak University. Her research interests number sense and conceptual learning in mathematics.