Abstract:

The aim of this study is to determine the difficulties encountered by the 7th grade students in the subject ‘percent’. The study was carried out with 218 7th grade students in seven middle schools with different socio-economic backgrounds in a province in Turkey. As data collection tool, Percent Subject Test (PST) consisting of 30 questions that was developed to find out the difficulties regarding the subject of percent was used. The quantitative data was analyzed by t-test while the qualitative data was analyzed by content analysis technique and seven categories have been reached. Analysis showed that the mean success of the 7th grade students was around the medium and the female students were significantly more successful compared to the male students. It has been determined that the participants had difficulties in understanding and interpreting the concept of percentage, calculating an amount of which a certain percentage is given, writing a number in terms of a percentage of another number, finding the quantity that equals to a certain percentage of another quantity, making fraction-decimal-percentage conversion and differentiating between the quantity and the percentage. In addition, it has been observed that the students had a misconception that they consider operations with percentages as in natural numbers.

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