The effect of teaching based on realistic mathematics education on critical thinking skills and perception of mathematical resilience

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of mathematics teaching based on realistic mathematics education on eighth grade students' critical thinking skills, disposition, and mathematical resilience perception. In this direction, a one-group pre-test-post-test design, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study, and mathematics teaching was carried out with activities based on GME and context-oriented problems. The study was conducted with 8th grade students studying at a public secondary school. The data were collected in the spring term of the 2022-2023 academic year. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics of the scale scores were used to determine the critical thinking skills, dispositions, and mathematical resilience levels of the students. As a result of the research, it was seen that mathematics teaching based on GME increased the students' critical thinking skills and dispositions at a statistically significant level in the posttest mean scores compared to the pre-test mean scores. There was an increase in the posttest mean scores of the participation, cognitive maturity, and innovativeness dimensions, which are the sub-dimensions of critical thinking dispositions, compared to the pre-test mean scores. While this increase was statistically significant for the participation dimension, it was not for the cognitive maturity and innovativeness dimensions. It was found that GME-based mathematics teaching significantly increased the post-test mean scores of students' mathematical resilience compared to the pre-test mean scores. While there was an increase in the posttest scores of the value, struggle, and development sub-factors of mathematical resilience, this increase was not statistically significant for all sub-factors. These results show that GME-based mathematics teaching contributed to the development of students' critical thinking skills, disposition, and mathematical resilience perception.