Preservice elementary teachers' identification of necessary and sufficient conditions for a rhombus

This study attempts to answer the question: "how well do preservice elementary teachers identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for a rhombus? Forty-five elementary preservice teachers were interviewed individually on a rhombus task. They were given four quadrilaterals and asked which of them was not a rhombus. Interview transcripts were analyzed and coded by each researcher independently. Findings have showed that some of the participants noticed many properties of a rhombus, but they did not see the relationships between the properties. Hence they could not reduce the list of properties to a concise definition with necessary and sufficient conditions. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboyl