Mathematical Connections Made by Teacher in Linear Program: An Ethnographical Study

Abstract

Mathematical connection ability helps students to understand the concepts and the applications of mathematics, in this context, the teacher as an implementer of education has an important role to make a mathematical connection in their instruction. An ethnographic study was conducted to determine the teacher's ability to make mathematical connections. A certified teacher with 30 years of teaching experience is observed and is interviewed to obtain the data. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings show that the relationship between mathematics and everyday life arises as a mathematical connection in the form of different representations. When the teacher shows that a sentence can be another representation of a mathematical symbol, then those activity is a configuration of mathematical connection representation. In this study, the part-whole relationship is obtained not as a generalization but as a specific example. The relationship between ideas, facts, and concepts in mathematics appears in every construction, however, the process of knowledge construction is only carried out in the form of procedure and implication.