AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFFECTS OF DYNAMIC GEOMETRY SOFTWARE (DGS) ON STUDENTS’ THINKING PREFERENCES: SOLVING GEOMETRY PROBLEMS WITH AND WITHOUT DGS

Abstract

Researchers suggest that students have preferences (visual and non-visual) when solving mathematics problems. Many times students have difficulties in solving problems because of one-sided thinking and weakly associating other representations. Reform efforts support connecting visual representations with non-visual representations in order to develop deeper understanding.  This study investigates how prospective teachers with different preferences for visual, non-visual, and harmonic thinking solve geometry problems with and without using DGS. The study aims to explore whether students’ use of DGS when solving geometry problems is related to their preferences. Suwarsono’s mathematical processing instrument (MPI) was administered to determine their preferences for visual and non-visual thinking. Based on MPI instrument’s results and their performances of geometry problems solved with and without DGS, three students were selected to be interviewed.  Multiple case studies were conducted to conduct a deeper analysis. The reason for selecting three students was to take at least one person from each group based on their thinking preferences so that different cases can be compared and contrasted. The results reveal that regardless of students’ preferences preservice teachers preferred to use visual solutions when they are asked to use DGS. When their solutions of DGS and paper-and-pencil were compared, students’ solutions with DGS demonstrated more conceptual understanding of the task than paper-and-pencil.