GeoGebra and ninth-grade students’ understanding of relationships between lines

Abstract

Introduction: in the contemporary educational scenario, the teaching-learning of mathematics faces the challenge of promoting a deep understanding of concepts, overcoming traditional approaches focused on the mechanical repetition of procedures. Objectives: the objective of the study was to design and implement a pedagogical strategy based on six interactive activities with GeoGebra and to describe the variations observed in the understanding of the relationships between lines in ninth grade students of a bilingual intercultural rural institution in the canton of Guaranda, Ecuador. Methodology: a quantitative, applied, and field approach was adopted, with a pre-experimental single-group design with pre-test and post-test measurements (O₁–X–O₂). The population consisted of 60 students, and, through non-probabilistic convenience sampling, a sample of 15 students was selected for the intervention. An objective test, an analytical rubric and an observation sheet were used; Because the instruments had different maximum scores, the raw results were transformed into a common percentage scale. Results: the descriptive evaluation showed favorable variations in the four competencies analyzed: graphic interpretation, slope calculation, parallelism and perpendicularity, and graphic-algebraic relationships. Conclusions: the results support the pedagogical relevance of integrating GeoGebra, multiple representations and contextualized teacher mediation, although, due to the characteristics of the design, they do not allow establishing causality or statistical generalization. It is recommended that future research use parallel and validated instruments, comparison groups, larger and more diverse samples, and longitudinal follow-ups to examine the stability and transferability of the observed learning. General area of study: Education. Specific area of study: Mathematics didactics and educational technology. Type of item: original.