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The Development of a Framework for Assessing Dynamic Geometry Task Quality

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Abstract

This study documents the development of a Framework (the Dynamic Geometry Task Analysis Framework) to be used to indicate the relative quality of tasks produced for dynamic geometry software. Its purpose is to assist curriculum writers and teachers in evaluating and creating dynamic geometry tasks. To produce it, numerous tasks submitted by secondary mathematics teachers as part of a year-long professional development program were analyzed, before creating three dynamic geometry mathematics tasks that, according to the Framework, were ranked as low, medium and high in quality. Semi-structured interviews with twelve high school students were conducted and analyzed to examine relationships between the quality of tasks as specified by the Framework and the quality of student argumentation. Results showed the Framework effectively reflects task quality based on student mathematical activity and argumentation.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work partially supported by the US National Science Foundation, under Grant No. DRL-0929543.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Elon University, Elon, NC, USA

    Aaron Trocki

  2. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Karen Hollebrands

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  1. Aaron Trocki
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  2. Karen Hollebrands
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Correspondence to Aaron Trocki.

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This co-authored article is based on the doctoral dissertation of the first author (Trocki, 2015), which was supervised by the second author. When the pronoun ‘I’ is used in this article, it refers to the first author.

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Trocki, A., Hollebrands, K. The Development of a Framework for Assessing Dynamic Geometry Task Quality. Digit Exp Math Educ 4, 110–138 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40751-018-0041-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40751-018-0041-8

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