Exploring mathematical reasoning skills of middle school students

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the types of mathematical reasoning skills of 7th-grade (12–13 age) students. The research was conducted with twelve participants selected from among the 7th-grade students of two different teachers. This study used A qualitative research approach, and a holistic case study design was applied to the research design. The Mathematical Reasoning Skill Test prepared by the researchers was used as a data collection tool. The findings of semi-structured interviews also supported the data obtained from that test. For the student's mathematical reasoning skills, descriptive analysis was used based on the analysis chart created by Lithner (2005, 2008). The study's findings showed that these 7th-grade students used algorithmic mathematical reasoning more frequently, which is one of the imitative reasoning types, despite also using various types of reasoning in the face of the problems they encountered.