The effect of gender composition of cooperative groups on students' achievement, motivation, and social skills

This study aims to examine the effects of mostly girls, mostly boys and equal gender group compositions on achievement, perceptions of social skills, and motivation of 6th grade students in the unit of "Conduction of Electricity/Physical Events" in cooperative learning.The study was conducted with 78 6th-grade students studying at a middle school in Adana in the spring semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. There was no control group in the study, and there were three experimental groups. The unit "Conduction of Electricity/Physical Events" was administered to all three experimental groups in accordance with the cooperative learning method, and the students completed their experiments in accordance with the provided experiment sheets.The data of the study were obtained using the Conduction of Electricity/Physical Events Unit Achievement Test (EİBT), the Motivational Strategies in Learning Questionnaire (ÖGSÖ), and the Social Skills Scale (SBÖ). All of these scales were administered to all three experimental groups as a pre-test before implementation and a post-test after implementation. ANOVA was used in the analysis of the collected data.As a result of the study, it was found that gender group compositions (mostly girls, mostly boys, and equal ratios) did not have a significant effect on academic achievement, motivation, and social skills.