Eric.ed.gov – Student Approaches Resulting from Integration of Cultural Context into Transformation Geometry Activities

The purpose of this study is to investigate how students’ in senior grade of the high school participate in and interpret the transformational geometry activities integrated with cultural context. 5 students in senior grade participated in this study, all of whom live in Aydin district of Turkey. The main design of the study is qualitative. Participant students of the study involved in 9 different rotational geometry and culture integrated activities, 7 of which were performed as student activity sheets, 2 of which were performed as cultural games. 2 of the activities were constructed as a result of pilot study applied to 28 senior students by their math teacher. To collect data about how students participated in and made interpretations about the activities; various data collection tools such as observation, field notes, interview, audio recording and student activity sheets were used. The collected data were analyzed by qualitative descriptive analysis techniques. The results were presented as tables, figures constructed by students and direct quotations. Lastly, at the end of this study students were said to recognize the hidden mathematics in the objects from daily life, games with cultural background and history, and both in Turkish culture and other cultures.