ABSTRACT
Abstract: The topic of inequalities is one of the fundamental subject areas for the development of mathematical knowledge. Although there is a considerable body of research focused on one-variable inequalities, studies that investigate students’ performance on two-variable inequalities are scarce. With this in mind, the aim of this study is twofold: first, it provides an account of the difficulties that students face in interpreting and constructing different representations of two-variable inequalities; and second, it investigates the effectiveness of a computer-supported teaching sequence aimed at developing students’ understanding of different representations of two-variable inequalities. The participants in the study were 33 elementary mathematics teacher candidates. The data were gathered via a test implemented as a pre- and post-test. The main finding of the study was that students had difficulty in establishing the link between the coordinates of the points in a solution set and the algebraic representation of a two-variable inequality. Moreover, it was found that the students were not able to correctly use and interpret the logical connectives in compound inequalities. The comparison of the pre- and post-test scores indicated that the designed instructional sequence was beneficial for supporting students in understanding the different representations of two-variable inequalities.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Erdem Çekmez
Erdem Çekmez is an assistant professor at Trabzon University, Fatih Faculty of Education, Trabzon, Turkiye. He received his Ph.D. from Karadeniz Technical University. He is interested in computer-based mathematics education, mathematical understandings, and calculus instruction.