The impact of student coaching on middle school students' achievement in and attitudes toward mathematics

Asst. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Fatih ÖÇAL In this thesis, the impact of student coaching on eight grade middle school students' achievement in and attitudes toward mathematics has been investigated. In the context of the quasi experimental design utilized in this thesis, 26 students of a randomly selected classroom in a middle school in Ankara school district were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Female students were equally represented in both groups. In the process of the pretest posttest quasi experimental design with a control group, students in the experimental group were provided face to face student coaching by the researcher while those in the control group were not offered student coaching. Once the experimental intervention was over, posttest measurements of experimental and control groups' achievement in and attitudes toward mathematics were compared using nonparametric independent groups Mann-Whitney U test. The results of independent groups Mann-Whitney U tests indicated that posttest mathematics achievement scores of students in the experimental group were statistically significantly higher than posttest mathematics achievement scores of students in the control group. Furthermore, there was no statistically significant difference between posttest mathematics achievement scores of students in experimental and control groups as regard to their gender, parents' education, family income, and private room possession. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant difference between posttest measurements of experimental and control groups' attitudes toward mathematics. Keywords: Student Coaching, Solution Focused Coaching, Mathematics, Achievement, Attitudes