Van Hiele Levels Of Geometric Reasoning Essay

The Van Hiele Levels of Geometric Reasoning describes how students learn geometry. It was a theory worked on by Pierre Van Hiele and his wife, Dina Van Hiele-Geldof. They were Dutch researchers and teachers. They came up with this theory at the University of Utrecht in the year 1957. The Van Hiele’s did multiple research experiments and it took years for them to complete this thesis. Shortly after the thesis was complete, Dina passed away (Šafránková, 2012, p. 72). These levels have five important characteristics. They are in an order that does matter. The students go through these levels in order as each level is building off the prior level. The next level builds off of the previous level, with the new knowledge, it is not necessary you remember exactly what was done in the last, while it is important to remember, you learn new material and those key things learned will eventually tak the place of the old material. I think of this as the example 4+4+4+4+4 = ? …show more content…
This is a level that focuses more on analysis. “Students identify properties of figures, and see figures as a class of shapes.” (Feldhaus, 2015, Slide 4) In this level, the students are starting to make connections between the properties of shapes and the properties of the given figure. Students may make connections between a rectangle and it having two longer sides, and two shorter sides and the sides with the same length are parallel. This is where students start to notice how shapes are similar and different. This is also the level where children will begin to notice things like, rectangles have four sides, triangles have three sides, and circles have zero sides. This is really the stage where students begin to dig deeper into the properties. At this level, students are not yet recognizing things like angles and symmetry, this will come later (Burger & Shaughnessy, 1986, p. 44). The students do not yet have the knowledge for creating the proof for complete