Investigation of Libyan and Turkish students' thinking levels in solving quadratic word problems based on SOLO Taxonomy

Abstract

This article presents a study of the skills of Libyan and Turkish students in their quadratic word problems based on SOLO Taxonomy. The research model used in this study is a case study. The participants were 27 students at a high school in Kastamonu, Turkey and were 27 students at a high school in the city of Tripoli, Libya. The data were obtained by thinking test consisting of three problems. The test was applied to the students in the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year. Overall, the results showed that Turkish students had multiple structural levels of 48.15% and relational structural levels of 10.37%, which is considered a good ratio, and were better than Libyan students with multiple structural levels of 21.50% and relational-structural levels of 9.00%. This shows that the majority of Turkish students participating in the study may be successful in moving advanced thinking levels in these problems. On the other hand, there are students who cannot answer the problems as well as pre-structural and uni-structural students. Some of the reasons why these students’ levels are low may be misinterpretation of the problem, difficulty in understanding word problems and turning them into mathematical symbols, and negligence.