Problem solving skills and processes of primary school students

The aim of this study is to determine the problem solving skill levels of primary school students, the variables affecting their problem solving skill levels and their level of using problem solving process skills. The study group of the research consists of 105 students studying in the 4th grade of Fatih Sultan Mehmet Primary School, Kurucaşile Primary School, Geriş Primary School and Hisar Pirireis Primary School in the districts and villages of Bartın province in the 2020-2021 academic year. "Personal Information Form" and "Problem Solving Achievement Test" developed by the researcher were used as data collection tools in the research. The answers given by the students to the questions in the Problem Solving Achievement Test were evaluated twice by the researcher with 15-day intervals using Acar's (2018) "Problem Solving Skill Rubric" and the correlation coefficient between them was found to be 0.99. After the obtained data were entered into the SPSS 15.0 package program, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test were performed for the analysis of the data. In the qualitative part of the study, the answers given by the students to the problem solving steps of routine and non-routine problems were examined in order to determine at which step the students had problems, common mistakes were determined and themed. According to the results of the research, it was determined that the problem solving skill levels of primary school students were quite low. It was found that the problem solving skill levels of the students differed significantly according to the settlement where the school is located, whether they have their own room and whether they do additional work in mathematics; It was seen that there was no significant difference according to gender, mother's education level, father's education level and frequency of reading books. When the answers given by the students to the routine and non-routine problems in the achievement test in terms of problem solving steps were examined, it was determined that they were unsuccessful in the problem solving processes. It is among the results obtained that the most mistakes are made in the evaluation step in routine problems, and in the non-routine problems in the implementation step of the plan.