The effects of the digital story-based mathematics teaching on concept learning of secondary school students

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of the math teaching with digital stories formed according to context based learning approach on academic achievements, attitudes toward mathematics, motivation level, conceptual learning level and the opinions about digital stories of the students for the 6th grade, in the sub learning areas of "The integers and algebraic expressions". In the study, quasi experimental design with experimental and control groups and mix method that compose of qualitative and quantitative data were used The study group of this study was composed of the sixth grade students attending a public secondary school in the 2017-2018 school years. In the determination of the control and experimental groups, 2017-2018 first term average math scores of school academic performance of students were used. Because of not finding any meoningful difference between between the average scores of groups, Out of four homogeneous groups, two were selected as experimental group (N=52) and the other two as control group (N=52). Before and after the experimental procedure, evaluation tools which ensured validity and reliability applied as pre-tests and post-tests to both of the groups. "Achievement Test", "Math Attitude Scale", "Motivation Scale" and ''Conceptual Learning and sampling scale"were administrated to the sixth grade students at this school, "Student opinion form about digital stories in the math lessons" was applyed to only experimental group". Based on the preliminary test score results obtained from the tests and scales, no significant difference was found among the groups involved. Treatment was carried out over a period of 8 weeks. During the study, the experimental group received the math teaching with digital stories formed according to context based learning approach while the control group received regular science teaching depending on the mathematics course book. SPSS 11.5 package program was utilized to analyze the quantitative data obtained from the study. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. Whether the quantitative data has a normal distribution was assessed by Kolmogorov Smirnov Test. Depending on the results, parametric and non-parametric tests were used in the study. Non-parametric technics were used for the groups which don't show any normal distribution characteristics and parametric analyse technics were used for the groups which show normal distribution characteristics. In the study to analyze the relationship between the pre-test and post-test scores of academic achievements, attitudes toward mathematics, motivation levels of the groups, "t-test for independent groups", "paired samples t-test" were performed and the data were compared by p ≥ 0,05 significance level for parametric analyzes. On the other hands, for groups that don't demonstrate normal distribution charateristics, Mann Whitney U , Wilcoxon test and the Spearman correlation coefficient were used. As a result of the analysis of the data obtained from the study, it was found that the students in the experimental group, achieved higher "Achievement Test", "Math Attitude Scale", "'Conceptual Learning And Sampling Scale" scores compared to the students in the control group and that the difference between them were significant and it was revealed that the groups of motivation levels did not show statistically significant difference. As a result of the descriptive analysis of the data obtained from the qualitative dimension of the study, it was seen that the experimental group students expressed positive opinions about math lessons with digital stories. It was concluded that, the math teaching with digital stories formed according to context based learning approach, provided a positive contribution to the development of the students' academic achievement, attitudes toward mathematics, conceptial learning and sampling skills. In accordance with the results obtained, suggestions about the math teaching with digital stories formed according to context based learning approach were made. Keywords: Concept based learning, math teaching, digital story, concept learning