Students' conceptual and procedural knowledge of pythagoras' theorem

• Main Author: Nurhanisah, Binti Ismail.
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2008
• Subjects: L Education (General); QA Mathematics
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/23657/1/Students%27%20conceptual%20and%20procedural%20knowledge...%2824%20pgs%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/23657/4/Nurhanisah%20Binti%20Ismail%20%28fulltext%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/23657/

The objective of the study is to identify students' conceptual and procedural knowledge of Pythagoras' Theorem. The study involved eight Form Two students in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Matang Jaya, Kuching. These students have been selected based on their mid semester examination result. The research instruments for the study consist of five questions about Pythagoras' Theorem. All the questions are designed based on the Mathematics Curriculum Specification for Form Two or KBSM. Three different methods which are think-aloud method, written documents and interview are used to collect the data in this study. The results show that there are many conceptual and procedural knowledge of Pythagoras' Theorem that can be identified from the data collected. Some of the knowledge are relevant to the accepted ideas in mathematics and some do not. The study also tells us that some students have misconceptions towards the topic of Pythagoras' Theorem. Based on the conceptual and procedural knowledge, some models which represent students' knowledge of Pythagoras' Theorem were constructed. To conclude, it is important to identify students' knowledge of a topic in order to help students have a better understanding of a topic and improve the teaching and learning process.