• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.263-287
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• 2010

The purposes of the study were to investigate how children define a triangle, their reasoning types in identifying examples and non-examples of a triangle, and the relationship between their reasoning types and geometrical levels. Twenty-nine students consisted of 3th to 6th grades were involved in the study. Using the van Hiele levels of geometrical thought, children's reasoning types for identifying a figure as a triangle or non-triangle were categorized into visual reasoning, reasoning based on the figure's attributes and formal reasoning. The figure's attributes were further divided into critical and non-critical attributes. Most children identified a figure as a triangle or non-triangle based on critical attributes of the figure(e.g. closed figure, three, vertices, straight sides etc.) Some children identified a figure based on non-critical attributes of the figure(e.g. the length of the sides, the measurement of the angles, or the orientation of the figure). Particularly, some children who had lower levels of geometry identified a figure using visual reasoning, taking in the whole shape without considering that the shape is made up of separate components.