VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

Many students encounter difficulties in understanding fractions (Tian & Siegler, 2018; Wijaya, 2017). Drawing is a resource for students to express and encode their affective aspect (Burkitt, 2008) and students associate colours with their emotions while drawing (Baniani, 2022). The effectiveness of colour preference posits that in comparison to tendency to use more preferred colours (e.g., yellow) for figures with positivity, the tendency to use fewer preferred colours (e.g., brown) for the ones with negativity is less dependable (Burkitt & Sheppard, 2014). Hence, the purpose of the present study was to: (1) examine whether students with different levels of attitude towards mathematics would use differential colours in their freehand drawings, and (2) explore whether students with different levels of attitude towards mathematics would vary the size of their freehand drawings. Participants were twenty-six fifth grade students from a public middle school. Students’ drawings of fractions were collected by Drawing of Fractions Task whereas their attitudes towards mathematics were measured by the Mathematics Attitude Scale-Short Form. Correspondence analysis and cross-tabulation analyses were performed. Results revealed that the majority of students exhibited positive attitudes towards mathematics (high preference of yellow, pink, and red crayons), and tended to produce their drawings on a large scale. Students with different levels of attitudes towards mathematics would use size and colour symbolically (Burkitt et al., 2003). Students’ colour use and size may alter with their development and age. This study is limited to small sample size. Future research merits a longitudinal study with larger sample sizes.