The effect of project approach teaching on elementary school fourth grade students' problem solving skills, attitudes towards social studies, academic achievements and retention

In this study, the effect of project based teaching approach on problem solving skills, attitudes towards social studies, academic achievement and retention of fourth grade elementary school students was investigated. This research was an experimental study designed, according to pretest-posttest design with control group. One experimental and two control groups were formed randomly. The researcher taught both in experimental and control groups. The study was conducted on fourth Grade students who were attending to Şehit İlbey Gülbey Elementary School, in the Seyhan District of Adana. The subject of the study consisted of Total 97 students. Thirty two of them were in placed experimental group, 33 in first group and 32 in the other control group. The groups were equialized according to their social studies academic achievement pretest scores and social studies attitude scale pretest scores. To collect data three Measurement instruments were used. Social Studies Academic Achievements Test was used as pre test, post test and retetion test to measure academic achivement. Social Studies Attitude Scale was used also as pre test, post test and retention test to measure attitudes toward social studies. Problem Solving Skills Evaluation Form was used to assess problem solving skills of the students. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 10.0 Statistic Package Program. Descriptive statitics such as mean and standart deviation and inferential statistics such as Anova and Ancova were used to analyse data. The conclusions which were generated from the findings of the research may be summarized as following:VI 1. Although there was a difference betwen academic achievement post mean scores of the experimental and control groups, this differience was found not statistically significant. 2. Although, there was a difference in favor of experimental group betwen academic achievement retention score means of experimental and control groups this difference was also not statistically significant. Therefore it is assumed that the effect of project Based teaching approach on retention of the achievement is not meaningful. 3. since there was a statistically significant difference betwen experimental and control groups on the attitudes Toward social studies in favor of experimental group in terms of post test scores, it is not interpreted that project based teaching approach is more effective on the attitudes than the traditional method. 4. Statistically significant difference was also found betwen experimental and control groups on the retention scores of the attitudes test. This result indicated that project based teaching approach is more effective than traditional teaching method on the retention of the attitudes. 5. Since it was found that problem solving Skills of experimental group wich was measured on first, second, third, fourth and fifth weeks of experimentiation statistically significant, it is commented that project based teaching approachhas developed problem solving Skills of the students gradually. Key Words: Project based teaching approach, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, academic achievement, retention, social studies, learning and teaching.