A STUDY ON THE LEARNING DIFFICULTIES FOR ALGEBRA CONCEPTS

The aim of this study is to determine the learning difficulties students encounter when exposed to the concepts of “function”, “injective function”, “surjective function”, “relation”, “equivalence class”, “cartesian product set” and “subfield” in mathematics lessons. The sample of the study was composed of 166 students second year undergraduates from the department of primary mathematics education in Kazım Karabekir Education Faculty of Atatürk Universty in 2009-2010 academic year. Mixed method and explanatory design (in the framework of the mixed method) were used in the present study. In this study, data were collected from a test which is prepared by the researchers and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis showed that students had difficulty defining basic concepts; expressing their verbal explanations of these concepts in mathematical language; and determining the difference between the concepts. Regarding the concepts under study, the operational knowledge level of the students was found to be higher than their conceptual knowledge level.