Investigation of the skills of different mathematical modeling problems of secondary school students

Mathematical modeling describes a process in which mathematical symbols, concepts and skills are employed, and real life and mathematics are connected. Mathematical modeling problems require students to explain a situation and mathematize them as they can, to interpret the information in the problem, to select relevant data, to define the operations to new data and to create meaningful representations. In this study, it is aimed to develop modeling skills of secondary school students with the help of different mathematical modeling problems. In the research, one of the mixed method patterns, where quantitative and qualitative methods are used together, is a embeded design. The research was carried out in the fall semester of 2018 - 2019 academic year with a total of 34 students (18 experimental group and 16 control group) in the 6th grade of the secondary school in the rural part of a province in the Southeastern Anatolia Region. The data of the research; mathematical modeling problems with different profiles developed by the researcher, Mathematical Problem Solving Attitude Scale, semi-structured interview forms and Personal Information Form. As the result of the normality test in the analysis of the obtained quantitative data, the experimental and control groups did not show a normal distribution, while the non-parametric tests were analyzed with the Mann Whitney U-Test for unrelated samples. In addition, content analysis was conducted for the qualitative data analysis. As a result of the research, it was seen that modeling problems with different profiles used throughout the process contributed positively to students' modeling skills, their views on mathematical modeling and their mathematical problem-solving attitudes. In this study, modeling problems were classified and it was seen that the modeling skills of students increased significantly at the end of the teaching process with classified mathematical modeling problems. Therefore, modeling problems can be classified acording to different qualifications and the development of students modelling skills can be examined.