The effect of visual and auditory material use on students? academic succees and level of retention in 8 th grade Turkish Republic revolution history and Kemalizm lesson in elementary education

The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of the use of auditory and visual materials on the academic success and the level of retention of knowledge in 8 th Grade Turkish Republic Revolution History and Kemalizm lesson in the Elementary Education and to reflect the opinions of the students on the process.In this study among the experimental patterns pre-test and post-test control grouped half experimental pattern? has been used. Environment and sample haven?t been chosen owing to experimental form of the study. İnstead work of the sample group has been chosen. In this study, work group contains 46 students who are studying at the 8 th grade in two seperate classes of Ödemiş Bademli Şükrü Saraçoğlu Elementary School in İzmir, in the 2007- 2008 education year.Data of the study has been conducted by a success test and a semi-configured interview form. To analyze the data obtained during the research process, SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) 15.0 and ITEMAN (Item and Test Analysis Pragram) programs have were used. Arithmetic mean & standard deviation to describe the groups, paired t test to determine the changes in groups and independent t test to determine the changes between groups, have been used. The significance level was adopted as reliability level .05.The findings conducted at the end of the study are,During the instruction of the Elementary Education Turkish Republic Revolution History and Kemalizm lesson, it has been observed that there happens a meaningful difference between the academic success of the students of the control group, to whom traditional instructions were applied and the students of the experimental group, to whom the instructions were applied via the use of auditory and visual material, in favor of the latter.A meaningful difference has been observed between the level of retention of the experimental group, to whom Turkish Republic Revolution History and Kemalizm lesson in Elementary Education taught by use of auditory and visual materials and the control group to whom the instructions were applied through traditional means, in favor of the first one.In the group of students which Turkish Republic Revolution History and Kemalizm lesson in Elementary Education was taught by using visual and auditory materials, students? opinions on the unit process have been determined positive and it was seen that the study applied affected the learning process positively and making the informations concrete, provided permanent and meaningful learning.Key Words: Visual and Auditory Material, Revolution History, Teaching of Revolution History