The effect of student-centered strategies methods and techniques on the mathematical success of primary school students: Systematic review and meta-analysis

The main purpose of this research is to synthesize the experimental studies which refer to the effect of student-centred strategies, methods and techniques used in primary school mathematics lessons on academic achievement in mathematics. Certain criteria were used for the inclusion of primary research studies in the synthesis. 63 studies were included in the study as a result of the review. The total sample size is 4835. The reliability of the coding protocol in the study was achieved in two stages by calculating the "inter-coder reliability". The reliability (AR) was calculated as 0.88 and was considered sufficient (AR> .80). The publication bias was checked using five different tests and no bias was found out. In the systematic review part of the study, the data were subjected to descriptive analysis. Meta-analysis results show that student-centred strategy methods or techniques are more effective than traditional teaching methods. When 66 effect sizes from 63 studies were analyzed under the random effect model, the effect size was calculated as 0.787. The overall impact value attained indicates a wide and medium level of impact according to various classifications. In the analysis of moderator variables, no significant difference was found for the moderators of the implementation approach, the duration of the application, the type of publication, the database, the grade level, the scale used, the age of starting school, the country, and the sample size.