THE MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PROBLEM SOLVING SUCCESS OF PROPORTION RELATED PROBLEMS ACCORDING TO COGNITIVE STYLE, GENDER AND PROPORTIONAL REASONING LEVEL

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between 7-8 grades students’individual characteristics (cognitive style, proportional reasoning level and gender) andproblem solving success. For this purpose, the focus was over five types of proportion relatedproblems which are “missing value, quantitative comparison, qualitative comparison, percent and similarities in triangles”. The study was conducted on 134 (65 girls and 69 boys) 7th and 8thgrade students. Three success tests on proportion related problem are used for testing problemsolving success; cognitive style test (Group Embedded Figures Test) and proportional reasoninglevel test (OAYS) are used for determining the students’ individual characteristics. The findingsshowed that the girls performed better than boys on quantitative comparison problems; boysperformed better than girls on qualitative comparison problems; the field independent studentsperformed better than the field dependent students on all proportion related problem types.