Page 45 - IO1-Report

KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

Refugee Students Turkish Students
Girls Boys Girls Boys

Yes 51% < 58% 73% ≈ 72%
Do you understand Somewhat 33% > 27% 23% ≈ 24%
math book?
No 14% ≈ 15% 4% ≈ 4%
Table – 27: Students’ understanding of math book.
(Note-1: The sign ≈ means that the difference is not statistically significant. Note-2: The sum of percentage
may not give 100 due to students who do not reply whether they like math or not.)

Only 4% of Turkish students cannot understand math book (Table-27). But the percentage of RS who
cannot understand math book is more than 10 points higher than Turkish students. Thus, the ratio of
RS who do not understand math book is above the “normal rate” if there is no significant variation in
the ability distribution of refugee and Turkish students. Since the math books use the logic of explaining
topics via text in Turkish, the level of Turkish language may affect the students’ understanding of math
book.
Table-28 indicates the effect of refugee students’ Turkish level on their understanding of math book. As
expected, the ability to understand the math book is increasing with the increase in Turkish level. RS
who cannot understand math book have the lowest level of Turkish language. Therefore, the ULM
project has very high potential to satisfy very crucial need of RS to learn math course. The fraction of
RS who cannot understand math book can be reduced to the “normal rate” if the lack of good level of
Turkish language is compensated with intensive usage of universal language of math in textbooks. RS
would be able to doing math at their existing Turkish level.

What is your
level of Turkish language?

Girls Boys
Yes 4.20 4.16
Do you understand Somewhat 3.73 3.77
math book?
No 3.52 3.63
Table – 28: The effect of refugee students’ Turkish level on their understanding of math book.
(Note: 5-very good, 4-good, 3-fair, 2-weak and 1-very weak.)

Finally, this survey explores whether students can understand math teachers or not. Compared to math
book, slightly higher fraction of students can understand their math teachers (Table-29). Unlike a book,
teachers may respond to the students’ need of help during the lessons by solving additional exercises.
Thus, students get the opportunity to experience learning by doing. However, the ratio of students who
cannot understand math teacher is same as the ratio of students who cannot understand math book
for Turkish students, and the ratios are very close for RS (Comparison of Table-28 and Table-29). The
percentage of RS who cannot understand math teacher is again above the “normal rate”. Thus, the
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