The effect of game-based instruction on students' academic achievement and mathematics anxiety in teaching the 3rd grade time measurement topic

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of game-based instruction on students' academic achievement and mathematics anxiety compared to traditional instruction in teaching 3rd grade time measurement topic. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental design, one of the quantitative research methods, was used to examine the statistical difference between the academic achievement and mathematics anxiety of the students in the experimental and control groups. The study was conducted with 60 3rd grade students (30 experimental group and 30 control group) from a public school. Convenient sampling method was used to determine the sample. The 'Mathematical Achievement Test' developed by the researcher was used to examine the statistical difference between the academic achievement of the experimental and control group students, and the 'Mathematics Anxiety Scale for Primary School Children' developed by Mutlu and Söylemez (2018) was used to examine the change in mathematics anxiety of the groups before and after the experiment. After the achievement test and anxiety scale were administered to both groups before the training, the time measurement acquisitions were taught for three weeks with play-based teaching method in the experimental group and traditional teaching method in the control group, and the achievement test and anxiety scale were administered to both groups once again. In the mathematical achievement analysis, 'Mann Whitney U Test and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test' were used because the data were not normally distributed, and in the mathematical anxiety analysis, 'Paired T Test and Unpaired T Test' were used because the data were normally distributed. According to the results obtained, it was determined that there was a statistically significant increase in the academic achievement of the students in the experimental group and a positive development in their anxiety towards mathematics. These results showed that game-based instruction has a significant effect on increasing academic achievement in mathematics and improving mathematics anxiety positively. Considering these effects of game-based teaching, the preparation of the mathematics curriculum applied in primary schools on the axis of games will ensure that mathematics lessons, which are seen as a means of anxiety, will be more fun and highly motivated and academic achievement will increase. In order to ensure that the game-based teaching method can be implemented effectively and in accordance with its purpose, in-service training can be provided to teachers, educational games suitable for the objectives can be included in the textbooks as a guide for teachers, and the intensity of the objectives in the curriculum can be reduced in order to eliminate the anxiety that the objectives cannot be met due to the time-consuming nature of game-based teaching.