The Effect of Geometric-Mechanical Intelligence Games on the Development of Teacher Candidates' Geometric Thinking Levels

In this research, it was aimed to determine the effect of geometric-mechanical intelligence games on the development of teacher candidates' geometric thinking levels. The research was designed according to the one-group pretest-posttest experimental design and was conducted with two experimental groups. The study group consisted of 54 primary school mathematics teacher candidates studying in a public university in the 2017-2018 academic year. In the experiment-I group, geometric-mechanical intelligence games were performed with concrete materials; in the experiment-II group, geometric-mechanical intelligence games were performed in computer environment. In the research, the “van Hiele Geometric Thinking Test” which was developed by Usiskin (1982) and adapted to Turkish by Duatepe (2000) was used as data collection tool. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Signed Rank test and Mann Whitney U testi were used to analyze obtained data. According to the findings of the research, it was determined that the activities of both performed with concrete materials and in the computer environment significantly increased the geometric thinking levels of the teacher candidates. However, it was determined that the effects of the activities performed with concrete materials on geometric thinking levels of the teacher candidates increased more than the activities performed in the computer environment, but the difference between them was not statistically significant