Educational Studies in Mathematics

, Volume 82, Issue 3, pp 361–377 | Cite as

Students’ geometrical perception on a task-based dynamic geometry platform

Article
First Online:

Abstract

This paper describes a task-based dynamic geometry platform that is able to record student responses in a collective fashion to pre-designed dragging tasks. The platform provides a new type of data and opens up a quantitative dimension to interpret students’ geometrical perception in dynamic geometry environments. The platform is capable of generating a collective image map of student geometrical perceptions for a pre-designed dragging task. This map is interpreted as students’ qualitatively different ways of perceiving a geometrical phenomenon under the drag mode, ways which are quantified and categorized in a collective way. The idea of task perceptual landscape is proposed to facilitate discussion on the pedagogical significance of this platform. Specifically, a task case is presented and analysed in which a methodology is developed that provides a way to classify students’ geometrical perceptions with respect to the task. The task perceptual landscape is interpreted as a collective example space of student perception of a task. Furthermore, an idea of personal example space is developed through the findings from a qualitative study for the same task. This brings about discussion on possible pedagogical correlation between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the platform.

Keywords

Dynamic geometry Geometrical perception Variation Example space 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their support of this work and their constructive and critical comments, which made this paper possible.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Education StudiesHong Kong Baptist UniversityHong KongChina
  2. 2.Faculty of EducationThe University of Hong KongHong KongChina

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