Philippine E-Journals

Construction and Validation of a Scale on the Different Sources of Conceptual Understanding of Conic Sections

Janwin Magas | Dominga Valtoribio

Discipline: Psychology

 

Abstract:

A conceptual understanding of mathematics will aid students in solving mathematical problems and is their starting point. The study's findings provide necessary information on the different sources such as teachers, the internet, modules, parents, and students’ own metacognition in developing students’ conceptual understanding of conic sections. As a result, this study is a quantitative study that aims to construct and validate an instrument that can be used to determine the extent to which the different sources help develop students’ conceptual understanding. The study included 107 high school students and 2 mathematics content specialists. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted for data reduction. The result of the exploratory factor analysis resulted in the removal of 14 items. Four items (19, 20, 24, and 48) failed to load on any dimension significantly, while 10 items (13, 16, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, and 49) loaded onto factors other than their underlying factors. The final form of the instrument has 35 statements that are designed to determine the extent of different sources of conceptual understanding such as teacher, module, internet, parents, and own metacognition in learning conic sections. 10 statements under “teacher” as a source of conceptual understanding, 6 for the module, 9 under the internet, 6 under parents, and 4 statements under own metacognition. The scale has an overall Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.93.