What does geometry do? A review of the Harun Reşit Kocacan’s narrative

Abstract

This article deals with the story of Harun Reşit Kocacan, one of the most important educators of the Republican period, who wrote about his experiences in Geometry lessons during his student years. The research conducted with the narrative research method. The data collection tool of the research is Kocacan's article titled "How did I love geometry?" published in 1924. Before analyzing the data, the researcher and a math education specialist read the story first separately and then together. In the analysis phase, the conditions and educational understanding of that period were also taken into consideration. Basically the data analysis was based on the interpretive hermeneutic approach and thematic content analysis. The prominent themes in the story are Harun Reşit's geometry lessons, his geometry teacher's approach to him and other students, and his journey to discover "what does geometry do?". Harun Reşit explained that he was afraid of his geometry teacher, that geometry teaching was not associated with daily life, the process of understanding what geometry was for and the pleasure he felt when understood. In the findings section, excerpts from Kocacan's story are given and in the discussion section, it is tried to compare today's geometry teaching with this example in our history. 

Keywords

• geometry teaching
• function of geometry
• history of Turkish education
• narrative analysis