Abstract:

This research was carried out to examine the perceptions of gifted secondary school students about the math problem solving attitude and processes. Sequential descriptive from mixed research methods was used in this study. The sample of the search consists of 94 middle school students who attend the Science and Art Center (SAC) in the Mediterranean region and the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades of the secondary schools concurrently in the academic year of 2017-2018. The study group of qualitative dimension of the research was composed of 16 students who were selected according to the criterion sampling method from the sample of the research. In this study, data were collected by using the Mathematics Problem Solving Attitude Scale (MPSAS) for middle school students developed by Çanakçı and Özdemir (2011) and by semi-structured interview form. In the analysis of quantitative data, using SPSS 21 package program; frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, t-test for independent groups and one-way analysis of variance were performed. Content analysis was also used in the analysis of qualitative data. As a result of the research, it was seen that gifted students had generally positive attitudes towards solving mathematics problems, and there wasn't significant difference between mathematics problem solving attitude scores of students according to gender and class level. Gifted students have positive and negative attitudes towards solving mathematics problems and students are motivated in solving mathematical problems. It was concluded that they don’t leave the problem without reaching the end, they are satisfied when they solve the problem, and they are sad when they can’t solve it. It was observed that the students liked the difficult ones when they were faced with difficult problems, and they wanted help from their surroundings if they could not, and they were expecting to be taught more different methods with the help of their  teacher. It was found that students partially follow problem-solving stages and exhibit critical behaviors when they solve the problems.

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