The concept of inequality not only provides the ability to think mathematically to consider logically and solve reasonably many problems encountered in daily life, but also helps one to manage precisely and clearly various difficult situations which c...
The concept of inequality not only provides the ability to think mathematically to consider logically and solve reasonably many problems encountered in daily life, but also helps one to manage precisely and clearly various difficult situations which can be faced during natural phenomena and everyday life. Therefore the school mathematic course itself needs to recognize the value of problem solving using inequalities, expose and guide students with the experience through which they can be contacting with various problems related to actual life and solving those in various methods.
However, since the school mathematic courses only consider the inequalities as a secondary concept which is processed completely with algorithm-like method(Boero & Bazzini, 2004), focusing on the standardized education and the results of problem solving, students only find themselves facing various difficulties whenever solving inequality problems.
Thus, it is important to diagnose the errors and their causes occurred during cognitive process of students more systematically through the analysis of their thinking over inequalities.
Accordingly the purpose of this study is to review the types of errors occurred while solving various inequality problems through a case study with the subjects of high school freshmen students and try to identify the cause of the errors as well.
To this end, this study has set two types of research problems as follows:
1. What are the error types occurred while solving inequalities for freshmen students?
2. What are the causes of inequality errors?
To conduct this research, three freshmen students of academic high school which is located at Jeollabukdo were selected as the subjects of research, and the answers of those students were analyzed by using error test paper.
The error test paper was composed of 12 questions total, containing all of the overall contents regarding linear inequality.
In this study, the types of error were classified into 7 categories, which are misused data, misinterpreted terms, illogical reasoning, lacking of essential facts and concepts, technical errors, non-required answers and omitted solving process with reference to 6 error models of Movshovitz-Hadar, Zaslavsky & Inbar(1987), and the causes of errors committed while solving problems were analyzed per each student via interview and observation of behavior.
As the result of the research, while various types of errors such as misused data, misinterpreted terms, illogical reasoning, lacking of essential facts and concepts, technical errors, non-required answers and omitted solving process occurred, misused data and illogical reasoning were the most frequent errors committed among those.
This is due to the high school students, who are in higher level of mathematical knowledge and perception than middle schoolers, tend to misuse the given data or utilize illogical reasoning process in order to obtain answers.
The reasons why the students committed errors are as follows:
First of all, although the students frequently adopted the strategies of presumption and speculation to solve problems, in many cases they had gone through the incorrect speculations, thus committing errors.
Secondly, they committed errors by attempting to modify the inequalities without proper understanding of the problems just as they blindly apply some mathematical formulas when solving problems.
Thirdly, they made frequent mistakes in the process of deciding the direction of inequality signs, transposing and calculating.
Fourthly and lastly, the students committed errors due to their inability to express mathematical situations to a formula.
Especially they struggled to establish mathematical equations by using given conditions from the text of problems and were not really aware of which term they needed to put as the unknown.
The research on the errors committed during math learning process may be conducted through the processes to diagnose errors, to prescribe the diagnosed errors, and finally to identify whether the errors were corrected.
As this study is mainly focused on the process of error diagnosis, it is necessary to aid the educational guidance for students to better understand linear inequalities and to help them to minimize errors with the succeeding researches to prescribe and correct diagnosed errors in the future.