The effect of teaching processes supported by procedural /conceptual knowledge on the development of analytical thinking skills

The aim of this research is to examine the effects of mathematics teaching processes based on conceptual and procedural knowledge on the analytical thinking skills of primary school students. For this purpose, the research was designed with a quasi-experimental model.. The study group consisted of 48 fourth-grade students enrolled in a primary school during the first semester of the 2023–2024 academic year. The analytical thinking skills of the students were measured using a 15-item multiple-choice academic achievement test developed by the researcher and structured based on expert opinions. The test covers fundamental dimensions of analytical thinking, such as comparison, part-whole relationships, cause-effect relationships, classification, and sequencing.IBM SPSS Statistics 26 software was used for data analysis. Before conducting the analyses, key statistical assumptions—normality, homogeneity of variances, and equality of variance-covariance matrices—were tested. To determine whether the students' pre-test scores were equivalent at baseline, an independent samples t-test was conducted. A mixed-design ANOVA was used to assess the effects of instructional type and time. Paired samples t-tests were conducted to examine within-group changes, and another independent samples t-test was used to assess differences in post-test scores. The significance level was set at .05.The findings revealed that instructional processes based on conceptual knowledge were more effective in enhancing students' analytical thinking skills compared to those based on procedural knowledge.