The development process of contextual based instructional geogebra worksheets for Turkish high school mathematics teachers

The purpose of this study was to develop contextual based geogebra worksheets to help Turkish high school mathematics teachers learn how to use GeoGebra appropriately and efficiently in teaching and learning of geometry. The Ministry of National Education [Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı] (MEB) has recently published a new mathematics curriculum to be taught in all high schools in Turkey from September 2013. The new curriculum contains geometry lesson objectives which require mathematics teachers to prepare a lesson combined with GeoGebra. However, Turkish high school mathematics teachers are not provided with any lessons or provided with limited lessons concerning GeoGebra by Council of Higher Education [Yükseköğretim Kurulu] (YÖK). Within this context, the results of the study are of great importance that Turkish high school mathematics teachers do not have only necessary skills to use GeoGebra but also how to use GeoGebra to achieve geometry lesson objectives written in the new curriculum. The participants of the study consisted of 7 first year pre service mathematics teachers who were enrolled in Graduate School of Education at Bilkent University in 2013. In this study to collect data, a survey with 7 different parts which have 63 questions in total on a 5 level Likert and also through verbal was utilized and written feedbacks which were provided by first year pre service mathematics teachers were collected. Simple descriptive statistics was conducted to analyze the data collected thorough a survey and written and verbal feedbacks were categorized. The results and findings of the study indicated that intrinsic motivation and general computer literacy knowledge level are two important factors that affect the learning of GeoGebra. Intrinsically motivated learners and high level users on general computer literacy knowledge learn faster and more meaningfully. Another important conclusion formed from this study is that learning will happen more effectively when contextual based worksheets are created by difficulty levels than the contextual based worksheets are developed considering holistic approach of GeoGebra.