Exploring Learning Difficulties in School Level Geometry

Abstract

This dissertation portrays my lived experience in educational journey and makes an exploration into my pedagogical practices as a student, teacher, teacher trainer and novice researcher. Mainly, I focused on the how difficulties impact in learning achievement of geometry and how learning difficulties creates. In this study, I used interpretive and critical, research paradigms to shape my dissertation where autoethnography helped me to observe critically and it produce the research text of my cultural and professional contexts of learning and teaching mathematics in Geometry. For this, I have used postmodern approach thereby multiple genres of writing such as stories, diary, poems, and narratives as a major source of data generation. Articulating myself within the multi-paradigmatic space and as an autoethnographic researcher, I have used the term ‘autoethnography’ as a synthesis research methodology by uncovering my ‘Personal via. Professional’ experiences to layer out the transformative source of data cohort. So, auto-ethnography helped me to place myself within my culture thereby enabling me to explore ‘multilayered pictures’ (i.e. journey toward different metamorphosis and pedagogical empowerment) of my educative practice through the reconstructing of self and others. Autoethnographic inquiry also helped me to examine the pedagogical culture and context from different perspectives as students, teachers, and researcher thereby offering space for interpretation, transformation and envisioning. During the process of this self investigation, this inquiry has changed my understanding about the reality, my views towards how to know the reality and accordingly what ways to espouse to understand the reality. My reflection and the review of literature have formed the ground for the same. In the process I have represented my stories and poem which has shown in the form of transformation based on my research project. After my investigation of traditional teachers - centered teaching learning strategy and root memorization method, I didn’t find these dualities so helpful and meaningful to understand geometry. I have experienced many situations which I encountered in classroom as both a teacher and a student. Nonetheless, the focal aim of my research work was to find out learning difficulties in geometry, how difficulties are created in geometry and what is the remedy of teaching learning geometry in secondary level classroom. In regard to theoretical referents and making my research more trustworthiness, I have considered realistic mathematics theory (RME), Burner's theory of discovery and Van Hiele theory moreover different learning theories as my guide. Based on those research contexts, I hope my inquiry will make little bit of contribution for further improvement in the field of secondary level geometry in school. Thus, in this dissertation I have touched mainly three geometry-learning difficulty contexts that are often complicated for learners. Firstly, it focuses in how difficulties are created in school level geometry. I show different scenario of my experience as teacher and student. Secondly, I identify main problem of learning difficulties in geometry based fallacy. In our learning system we are following traditional method of teaching learning i.e. speech, discourse, lecture etc. Thirdly, it focuses on how those misconceptions are reduced and what are the remedies for it. For this session, I also figure out the needs of geometry.