The Effect of Teaching Mathematics through Polya’s Problem Solving Process upon Attitudes of 4th Grade Students towards the Mathematics Lesson

Abstract

Education is a factor changing the individuals in every sense as well as affecting their attitudes. Through the education, various terminal and spontaneous behaviors are possible to be given to the individuals. In this sense, teachers play an active role upon the attitudes of students. For that reason, teachers’ measuring the attitudes of students towards a specific issue accurately and organizing the educational activities considering these attitudes increase the quality of education. It has been revealed in the studies carried out previously for several times that students have had difficulties in mathematics lesson and mostly developed negative attitudes towards this lesson. Student success’ being at not a desired level upon especially mathematical problem solving has been revealed in reports organized internationally. The purpose of this research was to investigate teaching problem solving as one of the areas students had the most difficulty through Polya’s phases upon students’ attitudes towards the mathematics. In the study, “pre-test and post-test control-group design” as one of the research methods was used as semi-experimentally. The students who participated into the research were determined choosing one experimental group and one control group among the 4th grade students studying at two state elementary schools in Adana province in 2014-2015 academic year. Upon the selection of the schools and students, mathematics grade-point averages and standard deviations of the previous term were regarded. As the data collection tools, Attitude Scale for Mathematics Lesson and Information Form developed by the researchers for determining the gender and ages of the students were used. Obtained data were analyzed using SPSS 22 statistical software program. In order to determine gender and age distributions, statistical methods such as frequency and percentage were used. For determining to what extent employed implementation affected the attitude towards mathematics, pre-attitude and post-attitude variance analyses of the groups were analyzed. As result of the analyses, it was noticed that although scores of the experimental group students were higher in post-attitude variance analyses of the groups, this difference was not significant. This revealed that mathematics teaching through the Polya’s phases provided a contribution upon attitudes of students towards the lesson; however, this contribution was not at a significant level; and the reason for this was the fact that changing of attitudes at a short period was difficult.

Key Words: Polya’s problem solving phases, Mathematics teaching, 4th grade, Attitude