The effect of teaching activities prepared according to theory of multiple intelligences on mathematics success and anxiety level of 4th grade students

In this study, it was investigated whether the teaching activities prepared according to the theory of multiple intelligence were influenced by mathematics achievement and anxiety levels of the 4th grade students of primary school. In the study, the teaching made by the activities which are prepared with the multiple intelligence is independent variable, mathematics course success and anxiety level is dependent variable. The study was designed according to the pretest-posttest control group trial model. The study was carried out with 55 students in two classrooms in a public primary school with middle socio-economic level in the central district of Osmaniye province, in spring semester of 2016-2017 academic year. The research carried out with an experimental and a control group lasted nine weeks. The lessons were processed by the researcher in the direction of the activities prepared according to multiple intelligences theory in experimental group, and by the classroom teachers in the direction of the lesson plan prepared in line with the 2015 Elementary Mathematics Teaching Program (MEB, 2015) in the control group. In the study, qualitative and quantitative research methods were used together to propound the effect of activities prepared according to the theory of multiple intelligences. As a data collection instrument, "Achievement Test" developed by the researcher was used as pretest and posttest for experimental and control groups; and the "Mathematics Anxiety Scale for Primary School Students" was used to determine anxiety levels before and after the research process. In addition, the "Personal Information Form" was used to obtain information about the students who participated in the study. The qualitative data were collected by having semi-structured interviews with a total of 10 students, five boys and five girls, in order to determine the process-oriented attitudes of the students in the experimental group. In the study, data obtained from achievement test and anxiety scale were analyzed using analysis of covariance. The level of significance in the analyzes was taken as p <.05 Qualitative data obtained from the semi-structured interview form were analyzed using descriptive analysis. According to the results obtained at the end of the study, as a result of the comparison of the pre-test and post-test scores; it has been observed that the experimental group is more successful. In addition, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of anxiety scores. However; there was a serious decrease in the anxiety posttest scores of the experimental group in comparison with the pretest scores. According to the results obtained from the semi-structured interview form, the students stated that they found the activities prepared according to the multiple intelligence as pleasurable / funny and that they started to love the lesson by conquering their fear of mathematics lessons and wanted to attend the lesson. They also mentioned that after applying the tests, they were not afraid of the Mathematics class, but increased their self-confidence. Key words: Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Mathematics Teaching, Mathematical Anxiety, Academic Achievement.