Zeynep Medine OZMEN1, Bulent GUVEN2, Yasin KURAK3
1Trabzon University, TURKEY
2Trabzon University, TURKEY
3Ministry of National Education, TURKEY
DOI: 10.14689/ejer.2020.86.13
ABSTRACT
Purpose: Previous research focused on graphical skills of the students, which remains a gap that exists, and there has not been comprehensive research on students’ graphical literacy abilities. The present study aims to picture graphical literacy levels of the 8th-grade students concerning the reading, interpreting, drawing, comparing and evaluating aspects.
Method: Participants in this study consisted of 46 students at 8th-grade from two different middle school levels. The data were collected by graphical literacy test.
Findings: The findings showed that student’s scores of the graphical literacy skill were low. Students had challenge at comparing two graphs, determining suitable context or graph type and realizing errors in the graphs. These results suggest that students are unable to fulfill advanced levels of the graph comprehension as read between and beyond the data.
Implications for Research and Practice: There is need to design the learning environment through these aspects to raise students as graphically literate. To achieve this, of course, graphical literacy level of teachers and quality of instructional activities are important. For future, graphical literacy levels of the teachers should be determined, necessary arrangements should be considered to raise teachers equipped with graphical literacy.
Keywords: Graphs, graphical literacy, graphical literacy aspects, graphical literacy levels of students