The impact of GeoGebra with conceptual change methods on students’ conceptual enrichment and conceptual change in trigonometry

Abstract

The purpose of this research study is to examine the effect of GeoGebra and conceptual change methods in enhancing conceptual change and conceptual enrichment in trigonometry of grade 10 students of different achievement levels in two schools of Lebanon. A mixed-method of quantitative and qualitative approaches is used in a quasi-experimental research design. The research study examines the differences of the impact of the three instructional designs (GeoGebra based explicit conceptual change (Geo + CC), GeoGebra based (Geo) and explicit conceptual change (CC)) on the conceptual enrichment, the overall conceptual change and the conceptual change in each of the concepts of periodicity, boundedness, non-monotonicity and non-linearity of trigonometric functions of students of different achievement levels. The findings of this research study show that the impact of combining the Geo and CC instructional designs on students’ overall conceptual change is significantly more than each of Geo and CC instructional designs alone. However, the three instructional designs do not impact the students’ conceptual enrichment differently nor the overall conceptual change or conceptual enrichment of students with different achievement levels. The impact of the instructional design differed for the four targeted concepts. For boundedness, the impact is mainly due to GeoGebra. For periodicity and non-linearity, the impact is mainly due to the explicit conceptual change methods. Instructional designs do not impact the concept of non-monotonicity differently. Four themes emerge from the qualitative analysis of students’ self-reported conceptions of their conceptual change in each of the four targeted concepts. The four themes that emerged from the revised Bloom’s taxonomy are non-recognition, recognition, explaining-exemplifying, and differentiation of conceptual change. The frequencies of the emerging themes in the three instructional designs are different for each of the four concepts. In general, the studen