Development of the Perception Scale for the Concept of the Integral

Applications for concept teaching in mathematics education essentially affect students' perceptions as regards the concept that is taught, as well as changing their mathematics anxiety and attitude toward mathematics. Therefore, we wished to draw attention to the fact that not enough concept-specific scales related to mathematics education measure variables, such as attitude-anxiety, can be found in professional literature. This research aims to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool in order to measure anxiety-attitude and usefulness perceptions of students for the concept of the integral. The data of this research, in which scale development stages are carried out meticulously, were collected from 565 students who study at mathematics education programs for primary and secondary education at three different public universities in Marmara region of Turkey and have learned about the integral concept in calculus lessons. Experts' opinions for content validity, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for factorial validity, discriminant and convergent validity analyses for construct validity, criterion validity, internal consistency and composite reliability procedures were performed on the applied scale respectively. As a result of the research, the Perception Scale for the Concept of Integral (PCI Scale) consisting of 20 items and three factors (anxiety, attitude, usefulness) with a 5-point Likert type was developed. It is considered that this research will contribute to professional literature with the thought that there is no scale aiming to measure the perceptions of students towards the concept of the integral in the relevant literature. Considering the lack of concept-based scales in the literature of mathematics education, with this research, the idea of the necessity of development of concept-based scales has also been put forward.