Comparison of the effect of the cooperative learning method and systematic education on the success, retention and attitude of student in social studies course in the 4th grades in primary schools

The present research was conducted in order to determine the effect of the cooperation based learning method, systematic education and a constructivist learning approach on students? success, their capacity for knowledge retention, and their attitudes in teaching the unit titled ?The Place We Lived In? of Social Studies Course, in the 4th grades in primary schools.The research was conducted in four classes receiving education in the 4th grade of the A Primary and the B Primary Schools in the Kırşehir province of Turkey. A pretest-posttest control group design was used in the research. A cooperation based learning method was applied in the experimental-1 group; systematic education was applied in the experimental-2 group while a constructivist learning approach was applied in the control-1 and control-2 groups. In order to obtain the data, a Social Studies Achievement Test was developed; the Social Studies Attitude Scale developed by Kurnaz (2000) was made use of; a retention test was also used. Among the measuring means, the Social Studies Achievement Test and the Social Studies Attitude Scale were applied as pretest and posttest in the experimental and control groups; a retention test was applied after 4 weeks following the completion of the research. The SPSS 15 program was made use of in data analysis and the data were compared at the p?0.05 significance level. After obtaining the pretest and posttest points of the experimental and control groups, the average points of the groups and the standard deviation of point distribution was calculated. According to the findings obtained at the end of the research, it was found that the cooperation based learning method and systematic education were effective on increasing attitudes regarding social studies, and the academic success of the students, and their capacity for knowledge retention, but the students? genders were not effective on the academic success, attitude and knowledge retention. It was concluded that a constructivist learning approach was effective in increasing the academic successes of the students in the control-1 and control-2 groups; but it affected the development of the attitudes towards social studies negatively. It was determined that a constructivist learning approach was effective on the capacity for knowledge retention of the students in the control-1 group; but it was ivnot effective on the capacity for knowledge retention for the students in the control-2 group. Also, it was found that students? genders were not effective on their academic successes and their permanent learning.It was concluded that academic success posttest points of the experimental and control groups were not significantly different from each other; the cooperation based learning method was more effective on the attitudes of the students than was systematic education and a constructivist learning approach. It was found that the cooperation based learning method and systematic education was more effective on the capacity for knowledge retention with respect to the constructivist approach. Key Words: Social studies, cooperation based learning method, systematic education, constructivist learning approach, and attitude.