earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to find the undergraduates’ mathematical reasoning of a geometric con-cept in science activity contexts. Through the given activity it was found that a variety of mathemati-cal misconceptions were possessed by students. We clustered students into two groups: one group hada 10-minute long short lesson to remind them of definitions of circle and ellipse during the introduc-tory science course. The other group without this lesson. The science activity allowed students to usesuch knowledge in determining the shape. In this scientific context, the key to the determination iswhether students bring up the definition of the orbit appropriately. It was connected with how the priorscientific knowledge affected their decision of the shape through mathematical reasoning. In mostanswers of student subjects, we found that students used naive and non-mathematical concepts such as“not a perfect circular shape” and “twisted circle”. Only a very few students succeeded in using themathematical definitions of the ellipse.