The effect of teaching mathematics with kinesthetic learning strategy on students' perceptions of mathematics self-efficacy and motivation for learning mathematics

The aim of this research is to examine the impact of teaching mathematics through kinesthetic learning strategies on students' perceptions of mathematical self-efficacy and their motivation towards mathematics. The study was conducted with 7th-grade students from a selected middle school in Düzce, using a pre-test post-test control group experimental design, which is one of the quantitative research methods. Accordingly, the effect of kinesthetic learning strategies on the topic of Ratio and Proportion within the "Numbers and Operations" learning area was examined. In the first stage of the study, a middle school in Düzce city center was selected through random sampling, and in the second stage, two classes of 7th-grade students from this school were chosen for the experimental study. While traditional teaching methods were applied in one class, kinesthetic learning strategies were used in the other class. For the research, activities suitable for the kinesthetic learning method were planned by the researcher, and these activities were used to teach the experimental group. In the control group, lessons were taught using the traditional teaching method. Data for the research were collected using the Mathematics Self-Efficacy Perception Scale developed by Işıksal and Aşkar (2003), consisting of 15 items, and the Turkish version of the Mathematics Motivation Scale (MMS) developed by Yavuz, Özyıldırım, and Doğan (2012), also consisting of 15 items. Through these scales, the impact of the kinesthetic learning method on students' mathematical self-efficacy perceptions and their motivation towards mathematics was examined. The results highlighted the importance of the kinesthetic learning method. For data analysis, t-tests, Mann-Whitney U tests, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used. The findings from the analyses indicated that teaching through kinesthetic learning strategies significantly increased students' perceptions of mathematical self-efficacy and their motivation towards mathematics compared to traditional teaching methods.