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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Relevansen av trigonometri : En studie i to deler på relevansen av trigonometri for elever på videregående skole

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Masteroppgave matematikkdidaktikk MA502 – Universitetet i Agder 2017 The topic of this master’s thesis is the relevance of mathematics, especially the relevance of trigonometry. Many students ask the question “why do I need to learn about this”. The aim of this study was to give the students an answer to this question. In the research literature, I found that this question has to do with relevance, and that relevance is a connection between people, an activity and future goals. In particular, one needs to question: relevance of what? relevance according to whom? relevance for whom? And relevance to what end? The empirical part of my research consisted of two studies. In Study 1 the purpose was to find out in which contexts outside school trigonometry is used. This information was obtained by asking experts from the university through email. In study 2 I used the information I got from study 1 to make a poster aiming at providing students an answer to why they need to learn about trigonometry. This poster was developed in several rounds, showing it to teachers, before I was finally satisfied to use it with students. The final version of the poster was showed to six students in upper secondary that I also interviewed. I used Cultural-historical Activity Theory to analyse the results and to find out what the students thought about the poster and the relevance of trigonometry. The research question were 1) how can the question “why do I need to learn about trigonometry” be answered? and 2) what are students view on my poster aiming to answer the question “why do I need to learn about this”? I also had a hypotheses that the students have little knowledge about applications of mathematics, and that they want this information. My results indicate that 1) trigonometry is used in many different fields and are potentially relevant to the students. And 2) the students received the poster well and generally they meant that knowing about applications is motivating. The results also indicate that that my hypothesis is largely true. The students did know about some of the applications of trigonometry, and they want to know more. Some of the students expressed that it should not be spent too much time on this, but a little could be fun. Keywords: Mathematics, Education, Relevance, Upper secondary, Trigonometry