The effects of STAD and TGT techniques of cooperative learning on sixth grade students? academic achievement, retention and social skill levels in ?istatistic and probability? subject in mathematics lesson

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) and Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT) techniques of cooperative learning on sixth grade students? academic achievement, retention and social skill levels in ?istatistic and probability? subject in mathematics lesson.The study which was applied in a state elementary school the distric of Seyhan-Adana in the first semester of 2009-2010 academic year was a semi-experimental study. The participiants of the study were 152 students. Two experiment groups and a control group were formed to compare the effects of STAD and TGT methods of cooperative learning according to each other and present method. After the groups were matched with fifth grade mathematics scores and demographic features, the groups were appointed to experiment and control groups with random appointment method. The study was conducted by researcher in all groups through the experiment and lasted in eighteen weeks.At the beginning of the study, ?Mathematics Achievement Test? and ?Social Skills Scale? were applied in all groups as pretest and at the end of the study as posttest. After five weeks, ?Mathematics Achievement Test? was applied again as retention test. At the end of the study, ?Interwiev Form? was used in experiment groups for getting students? opinions about techniques and application.3 ? 1 covariance analysis (ANCOVA) was used on the data obtained from achievement test and social skills scale to find out whether there were statistically significant differences between the groups. Bonferroni pairwase comparisons test was used to determine the direction of differentiation. The same operation was applied for retention test. The result of analysis indicated that TGT was more effective in terms of academic achievement and regarding to retention test, STAD was more effective. In addition, there was statistically significant difference among the groups in favour of STAD and TGT groups in terms of the social skill levels.The students in the experimental groups stated that their interest to the lesson had increased, they had motivated and learned the lesson more than before; their friendship relations had had a different dimension and they understood the importance of studying together and sharing.Keywords: Cooperative Learning Method, Teams-Achievement Divisions, Teams-Games-Tournaments, Social Skills