Covariational reasoning has been the focus of many studies but only a few looked into this reasoning in the polar coordinate system. In fact, research on student's familiarity with polar coordinates and graphing in the polar coordinate system is scarce. This paper examines the challenges that students face when plotting polar curves using the…

Using multiple representations of a problem can reveal the relationship between complex concepts by expressing the same mathematical condition differently and can contribute to the meaningful learning of mathematical concepts. The purpose of this study is to assess the performances of mathematics teacher-candidates on trigonometry problems…

Background: Trigonometry is an area of mathematics that students believe to be particularly difficult and abstract compared with the other subjects of mathematics. Trigonometry is often introduced early in year 8 with most textbooks traditionally starting with naming sides of right-angled triangles. Students need to see and understand why their…

The importance accorded mathematical connections in the professional literature is not properly reflected in the relatively small number of empirical investigations of students' mathematical connections. The purpose of this study was to investigate the mathematical connections that students form and use in solving nonroutine problems. Two main…

This qualitative assessment of tenth-grade students' (n=17) problem solving focused on the nature of students' thinking, their problem-solving strategies and heuristics, the mathematical approaches they selected, and the ways they monitored their own progress. The problem, presented orally and with photographs in a task-based interview, involved a…