Investigation of the effect of mind games practices on secondary school 7th grade students' attitudes to mathematics course, motivation and learning strategies

Objective: In this study, the effects of intelligence games on the attitudes, motivations and learning strategies of secondary school 7th grade students towards mathematics were examined. Material and Methods: The study was carried out with 11 experimental group students in the 2019-2020 academic year, for 24 weeks, 3 lesson hours a week, 38 different intelligence games were played. In the research, a quasi-experimental design with pre-test post-test control group was used. Mathematics lesson attitude scale (Önal, 2013), mathematics lesson motivation scale (Ellez, 2014), mathematics lesson learning strategies scales (Ellez, 2014) were applied to the students in the study as pre-test and post-test. Mann Whitney-U test was used to analyze the significance between the control and experimental groups in the analysis of the data, and the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test was used for the pre-test post-test significance analysis between the groups. Results: As a result of the study, no significant differences were found in the three scale scores. The mean score of the control group in all three scales decreased. On the other hand, the attitude and learning strategy scores of the experimental group increased, but their motivation scores did not change. Conclusion: Although no significant changes were found, the differences in the groups indicate the effectiveness of the mind games program. It is recommended that researchers conduct different studies in which out-of-control variables can be controlled more. It is thought that the studies on the intelligence games curriculum should be increased with experimental studies examining both cognitive and affective skills at different grade levels. Keywords: Intelligence Games, Mathematics, Attitude, Motivation, Learning Strategy