Examination of problem solving skills and the value of responsibility as a predictor of primary school students' motivation

This study aims to examine the relationship between the fourth grade primary school students' problem solving skills, levels of responsibility and motivation levels toward education in addition to analyze the predictability of their substantial problem solving skills, levels of responsibility and their academic motivation. As a descriptive study, there search was carried out using the relational screening model. The population consists of fourth grade students in Kocaeli province. To represent all the service areas in Kocaeli, 394 (199 female and 195 of male) students in seven schools with disproportionate stratified sample randomly chosen from the districts of İzmit, Körfez, Dilovası and Darıca constitute the sample of the study. The data was collected through "Academic Motivation Scale" that was designed by Vallerand et al. (1992) and adapted by Kara (2011), "Problem Solving Inventory for Primary-School-Age-Children" that was designed by Serin, Bulut and Saygılı (2010) to determine fourth grade students' problem solving skills, and "Responsibility Scale for Children" which was developed by Yontar (2013) for the purpose of specifying the students' responsibilities at home and at school. The data was analyzed using SPSS 20.0 software package. As the number of data was higher than 30, Kolmogorov-Simirnov (Lilliefors) test result was analyzed and it was found that the datas were not accord with normal distribution since the significance level (gender, age and the service area of the schools) scales was lesser than 0,05, and skewness and kurtosis values were lesser than ±1. Non-parametric tests known as Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis Test, multiple regression analysis and Spearman rank-order correlation were used as the scores were not normally distributed. As a result of the study, it is found that abstention from problem solving skill is a meaningful predictor of the academic motivation of the students while the trust in problem solving skill, the levels of self-control and responsibility during problem solving is not a meaningful predictor of academic motivation. Female students' problem solving skillss how that they have self-confidence and level of self-control during problem solving more than male students. Also their level of abstention from problem solving is less than male students. It may well be argued that the problem solving skills of the fourth grade students in different service areas have several characteristics in common. Female students' level of responsibility is higher than male students and the students in the second service area seem to have a higher level of responsibility compared to the ones in the first service area. It can be inferred that male students' specific extrinsic motivation levels are higher at a certain level. Also it is concluded that intrinsic motivation levels of the students of the fifth service area is higher than the students of the third service area. Keywords: Primary School Student, Motivation, Problem Solving Skills, The Value of Responsibility