The effect of a geo-strategic educational game on attitude, motivation, and geographical inquiry skills in geography lessons

Geography is a science that deals with the world itself and is far from being a course that teaches a little bit of everything. This difficulty in defining geography is not due to its weakness but rather to its richness. The versatility of geography has made its interdisciplinary teaching more important. The new era of geography education, which has gained a structure that aims to provide students with skills that can organize and use information, provide solutions to problems and move beyond simply transferring information about the earth they live in, has required new initiatives. These elements included in geography education processes are; interdisciplinary content, materials and applications. Science and Art Centers (BİLSEM) with in-depth curriculum development opportunities, application opportunities with a small number of students and flexible lesson times; provide suitable conditions for material design and use. Gifted students are the ideal student group for differentiated teaching approaches because they tend to acquire higher-level cognitive and affective skills than their peers and can organize advanced, complex information. This research aims to measure the effectiveness of the originally designed interdisciplinary game material and game method on the acquisition of geographical inquiry skills and the attitudes and motivations towards geography lessons of gifted students who receive education in social studies and geography workshops at BİLSEMs. For this purpose, the researcher designed an interdisciplinary Geo-Strategy educational game covering 13 fields related to geography. In order to determine the suitability of the material, a pilot application was carried out with a group of 32 7th and 8th grade students studying at the Science and Art Center. In the research, a mixed design was used in which quantitative and qualitative methods were used together. In the quantitative part, a quasi-experimental design with pre-test-post-test experimental and control groups was used. The data of the research conducted with a total of 54 students, 27 in the experimental group and 27 in the control group, were obtained using the "Attitude Scale Towards Geography Course", "Geographic Inquiry Process Skills Scale", "Motivation Scale towards Geography Course" and "Motivation Scale towards Teaching Material". In the analysis of the data; dependent sample and independent sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used due to the normal distribution of the data. Qualitative part data were collected through interviews with 13 volunteer students in the experimental group. Content and descriptive analysis techniques were used together in the analysis of the data. According to the research results; an increase was observed in the attitude towards geography course, motivation levels and geographical inquiry skills in favor of the experimental group that continued education with the Geo-Strategy game. At this point, suggestions were made to expand the use of game materials with original content in geography lessons for gifted students and to provide free access to these materials.