Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the abstraction thinking or the vertical reorganization activity of mathematical concepts of high school students while taking account of the abstraction that was constructed earlier, and the socio-cultural background. This study was qualitative in nature with task-based interviews as the method of collecting the data. It involved 62 high school students, and conducted for one year. The study focused on activities related to how the subjects grouped plane figures, recognized the attributes of each two plane figure, recognized the relation among them based on their attributes, defined plane figures, connected their attributes, as well as constructed the relations among plane figures. The results indicates that the abstraction level of high school students in constructing the relations among quadrilaterals consists of concrete visual level, semi-concrete visual level, semi-abstract visual level, and abstract visual level, together with indicators of each level. Therefore, the researchers suggest that it is necessary to design a learning activity that facilitates the four levels of abstraction, so that a student might increase his/her level of abstraction.

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