Abstract:

This research aimed to determine the effect of problem-solving teaching with verbal problems associated with children's books on the attitudes of fourth grade students towards mathematics. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group, one of the quantitative research designs, was adopted as the research design. This research was carried out in the second semester of the 2021-2022 academic year in the Mut District of Mersin Province. The study group of the research consists of 44 students attending the 4th grade of 3 different primary schools in the Mut District of Mersin Province in a similar socio-economic environment. In the Experiment 1 group, problem solving instruction was carried out with verbal problems associated with children's books, in the Experiment 2 group only problem solving instruction was carried out without being associated with children's books, and in the control group, verbal problems were solved as planned by the teacher. The "Attitude Scale Towards Mathematics" adapted into Turkish by Hacıömeroğlu (2013) was used to collect the data. The experimental procedure of the research was applied for 10 weeks. Since it is not appropriate to use parametric test techniques for small samples (Green & Salkind, 2008), one of the non-parametric tests, Kruskal Wallis and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, was used to analyze the research data. According to the research findings, it was concluded that there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental groups between the post-test mean scores of the Attitudes Towards Mathematics Scale of the students in the experiment 1, experiment 2 and control group. In the study, when the mean scores of the Attitudes towards Mathematics Scale of both the experimental 1 and the 2 groups were compared, it was seen that there was a significant difference in favor of the post-test mean scores within the group. Another result obtained according to the research findings is that there is no significant difference between the test mean scores of the Attitudes Towards Mathematics Scale of the students in the control group.

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