Browsing by Author "Haapala, Annika"

Tiivistelmä - Referat – Abstract The goal of this master’s thesis is to research and compare the perceptions of and beliefs about mathematics of Finnish third grade comprehensive school pupils studying with the Varga–Neményi method and the control group, which in this study consists of pupils not studying with the Varga–Neményi method. The inspirer of this thesis is the dissertation of Pirjo Tikkanen (2008) which, in addition to other previous studies (e.g. Kivovicsné Horváth, 2010), has shown that pupils studying with the Varga–Neményi method perceive mathematics as more co-operative than pupils in control groups do. This study provides additional information on the possible differences between perceptions and beliefs of mathematics of pupils studying with different methods. The research material of the Varga–Neményi pupils was gathered during the spring of 2020. The material of the control group was in turn gathered in 2009 and was received from the University of Helsinki. The study studied 13 different third grade classes in the Helsinki metropolitan area and included a total of 170 pupils, 40 of which were studying with the Varga–Neményi method. Each participant drew a drawing of their mathematics lesson and some wrote a brief description of it. The drawings were analyzed using a similar drawing analysis method as Tikkanen (2008). The perceptions and beliefs were first analyzed group-wide and later compared between the groups. The drawing analysis was aided by the pupils’ writings. The differences between the two groups in the study turned out to be small, and the most predominant methods represented in the drawings were teacher-directed and individual work. According to the holistic evaluation the pupils’ perceptions were mainly neutral in the Varga–Neményi group and positive in the control group.