The impact of effective use of materials by geography teachers on students? levels of attitude, academic success and ability to remember: İzmir case study

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a change in students? levels of attitude to lessons, academic success and their ability to retrieve learned information when geography teachers administer the lesson with the help of visual and auditory materials and tangible samples in an attempt to help students gain the desired behaviour.Experimental method was used in this study. A pattern of pre-test, post-test with a control group was preferred. In this study, students in the ninth grade in İzmir Private Gelisim College were selected as experimental and control groups. In the experimental group, a geography teaching method based on effective use of materials was used in the unit called ?Our Moving Earth? while in the control group, the same unit was taught with the existing teaching method. Both groups were instructed by the same teacher. At the beginning of the study, both groups were subjected to an ?Academic Achievement Test? and a ?Geography Attitude Scale?. This test and scale were re-administered at the end of the study. In the study, while such activities as making demonstration models, animation and playing computer games and technical devices such as projector, computer and smart board as well as ordinary teaching programs were used in the experimental group, the control group received only traditional teaching method (teacher-centered teaching). Of the 40 participants in the study, 23 were girls and 17 were boys.Experimental work lasted for 5 weeks. The lessons went according to the plan in both the experimental group and the control group. As a result of the implementation process, how geography teachers? effective use of materials affected students? attitudes to lessons, their academic success and their ability to retrieve learned information was analyzed. In the analysis of data, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t test, variant analysis and Mann Whitney U were used.As a result of the study, it was concluded that the effective use of materials by teachers in the 9th grade in the teaching of the unit ?Our Moving Earth? was far more beneficial than classical teaching to students? attitudes to lessons, academic success and their ability to retrieve learned information.