The effect of using educational mathematics games in mathematics teaching on student success and attitude

The aim of the study is to determine whether the use of educational mathematics games in mathematics teaching has an effect on students' mathematics achievement and their attitudes towards mathematics. The study group of the research consists of a total of 54 7th grade students, 27 of whom are in the experimental group and 27 in the control group, studying in a state secondary school in the Esenyurt district of Istanbul in the 2022-2023 academic year. In the study, a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group was used. The educational game used in the application process was prepared by the researcher and arranged by taking expert opinions. In the research, traditional teaching methods were used in the control group, and the teaching method with educational math games was used in the experimental group. The Mathematics Achievement Test prepared by the researcher and the Attitude Towards Mathematics Scale prepared by Önal (2013) were used to collect the data. "Mathematics Achievement Test" and "Attitude Scale Towards Mathematics" were used twice as pre-test before the application and post-test after the application. The obtained data were analyzed with SPSS 26.0 program, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney U Test, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test, Dependent t-Test and Independent t-Test were used. According to the results of the data analysis, a significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group between the mathematics achievement and attitudes towards mathematics of the experimental group, in which educational mathematics games and teaching method were used, and the control group, in which traditional teaching methods were used. As a result, it was seen that the use of educational mathematics games in mathematics lessons increased the mathematics achievement of 7th grade students and positively affected their attitudes towards mathematics.