7th Grade Students’ Understandings of Negative Integer

Abstract

The aim of the research is to determine 7^th grade students’ understandings relating the concept of negative integer. For this purpose, a total of 100 7^th grade students who were selected randomly from 4 middle school in Burdur centre were asked those two questions: “what do negative integers mean, where do they use”, “write a problem appropriate for the expression of “+3-7=-4”. The research is a qualitative research and the model is general scanning model. Descriptive analysis was conducted in analysis of the data. The students’ responses were tried to be given directly and presented categorically. The students indicated commonly the contexts of “temperature below 0 degree”, altitude below sea level (minus elevation)” and “debt” as usage areas of the negative integers. 38% of the students couldn’t give any example for usage areas of the negative integers. 22% of the students couldn’t write a problem appropriate for the given expression. These students indicated inappropriate context or inappropriate problem mathematically. 45% of the students didn’t write any problem. As a result, 67% of the students couldn’t write an appropriate problem. 33% of the students could write problems that are considered as appropriate. These students used commonly the contexts of “dept, dept owed, lose money”.