Students abstraction in re-cognizing, building with and constructing a quadrilateral

Abstract

This study aims to implement empirically students’ abstraction with socio-cultural background of Indonesia. Abstraction is an activity that involves a vertical reorganization of previously constructed mathematics into a new mathematical structure. The principal components of the model are three dynamic nested epistemic actions: recognizing, building-with, and constructing. This study identified the abstraction profile of a junior high school student in constructing quadrilateral relationship. The student was asked a question related to quadrilateral. The interview was developed based on her answers by using keywords, “what, how, or why”. The result of the student’s abstraction and attributes were used to recognize the differences and similarities of quadrilateral shapes, building-with attributes by linking the characteristics of every two quadrilaterals, and constructing a network of relationships among quadrilaterals by drawing a figure of such networks.   Key words: Abstraction, recognizing, building with, constructing, quadrilateral.