The purpose of this study was to compare selected sixth, seventh and eighth grades mathematics textbooks from Turkey, Singapore and the United States of America and explore their implications for presenting same opportunity to learn to the students at the same grade level. In this study, the selected books were analyzed in terms of whether they included perimeter, area and volume topics, how they presented the topics on the basis of the selected features and the complexity of to-be-solved mathematical problems related to the topics. Some similarities and differences were observed among the textbooks. It was found that the Turkish textbooks are inclusive in terms of subtopics related to perimeter, area and volume. However, the number of pages dedicated to present the topics is the highest in the Singaporean textbooks. That is, in comparison to the Turkish textbooks, the Singaporean textbooks include fewer number of subtopics related to perimeter, area and volume, but the subtopics are presented in a more detail manner. These books are also rich in terms of mathematically relevant illustrations that make the topics more understandable for students. While the U.S textbooks benefit heavily from technology to present the topics, especially by using three-dimensional shapes / the Turkish and Singaporean textbooks do not make use of technology. The textbooks do not show a difference in terms of complexity of to-be-solved problems. Since all of them mostly include the problems with moderate complexity. Despite there is not any difference among the textbooks in terms of the complexity of to-be-solved problems, there is a difference in terms of the number of to-be-solved problems in the textbooks. The Singaporean textbooks encompass more to-be-solved problems compared to others. The study was concluded by providing some useful suggestions to cover the perimeter, area and volume topics in a way that makes students&rsquo / learning easier and to present same opportunity to learn to the students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612689/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| Creators | Ozdogan, Serpil |
| Contributors | Erbas, Ayhan Kursat |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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