Abstract:

The objective of the study is to reveal the mathematical reasoning skills of 7th grade secondary school students towards PISA questions.  This research has been conducted during the academic year of 2016-2017. The study was carried out with 51 students in total, from a province in the Black Sea region of Turkey by using random sampling method. Case study method was employed in this study. The reasoning statements expressed by students during problem-solving were analyzed via content analysis method. The problem called Energy Needs from the Chapter 1 of normal units, which is named Problem Solving Questions from PISA (Program for International Student Assessments) (2015), as the data collection tool for the study. This is a two phased problem, which includes two separate problems. The problems were evaluated and analyzed according to mathematical reasoning problem solving skills of NAEP (2002). In the first phase, which determines whether students use problem-solving strategies, the data related to the problem, and the related mathematical information, the findings suggest that the students wrote down the data related to the problem and clearly determined what was expected from them. It was observed that the students used their knowledge by mathematically associating what was expected from them with the information provided in the problem.  In the second phase, which determines whether students use reasoning skills, the findings suggest that students used their inductive, deductive, statistical, and proportional reasoning skills while solving the problems.  In the third and last phase, which determines whether students have delivered the correct decision on their solution's convenience and accuracy after solving the problem, it is observed that majority of the students checked the accuracy of their solution and crosschecked to determine whether they correctly solved the problem.

Keywords: