Students\u27 perception of difficulty of algebraic tasks in elementary school

Diplomsko delo govori o učenčevi percepciji zahtevnosti algebrskih enačb v osnovni šoli. V teoretičnem delu je opisan proces metakognicije pri osnovnošolskih otrocih ter pomen učenčevega percipiranja zahtevnosti naloge v učnem procesu. V osrednjem delu so predstavljene semantične in sintaktične komponente matematičnih nalog, ki so zamišljene kot analogija semantičnih in sintaktičnih komponent navadnih besedil. V nadaljevanju se osredotočimo na algebrske enačbe in predstavimo semantične in sintaktične komponente, ki jih v njih zasledimo in objektivno vplivajo na zahtevnost nalog. Dotaknemo se raziskav TIMSS in NPZ in analiziramo naloge na temo linearnih algebrskih enačb z eno neznanko glede na dejavnike, ki vplivajo na njihovo zahtevnost in so kasneje uporabljeni v empiričnem delu. V empiričnem delu je predstavljena raziskava, s katero sem želela ugotoviti vpliv izbranih dejavnikov na učenčevo percepcijo zahtevnosti algebrskih enačb. V okviru raziskave je bil sestavljen preizkus z več trojicami nalog. Učenci so v vsaki trojici ocenili zahtevnost nalog in jih razvrstili po percipirani zahtevnosti. V zaključku sledi primerjava med uspešnostjo učencev pri reševanju nalog o linearnih enačbah na raziskavi TIMSS in NPZ, njihovo percipiranje zahtevnosti nalog iz raziskave diplomskega dela ter objavljenih raziskav tujih avtorjev.The thesis is about students’ perception of difficulty of algebraic equations in elementary school. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the process of metacognition and the function of the perception of difficulty of mathematics tasks in the learning process. Then, we present the semantic and syntactic components of mathematics tasks (an analogy to semantic and syntactic components of plain texts). In particular, we consider these components on tasks related to the solution of linear equations. The components serve as a tool for analyzing the difficulty of mathematics tasks. We consider also the results of TIMSS and NPZ studies related to the linear algebraic equations with one unknown and relate them to the components that influence their difficulty and are later used in the empirical part of the thesis. In the empirical part of the thesis we present a research on the factors that influence the students’ perception of the difficulty of algebraic equations. Students were asked to range the tasks within several triads of tasks according to the perceived difficulty of the tasks. The found perceived difficulty of the tasks is compared with students’ performance in the TIMSS and NPZ research and the published research by other authors