Investigation of the effect of plan-do-evalute routines applied in the pre-school period on the problem solving skills of children

The purpose of this research is to to examine of the effect of the plan-do-evaluate routines applied in the preschool period on the problem-solving skills of the children's educational process. This research has been conducted via the control group pretest posttest research model which is a quantitative research model. The work group of this research consists of 40 children of age 5 who are enrolled in the preschool under the Ministry of National Education which is located in the Konyaaltı district of Antalya Province. "Problem Solving Skills Scale" (Ages of 4-7) (PSSS) which was developed by Aydoğan, Ömeroğlu, Büyükköztürk and Özyürek (2012) has been used as the data gathering tool. Data which has shown normal distribution has been analyzed via parametric methods while data which has not shown normal distribution has been analyzed via, non-parametric methods. According to the results of the research, a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scale scores which were applied on the children in the experiment group has been observed. While a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scale scores which were applied on the children in the experiment group in the context of "deciding whether the knowledge for the problem solving is sufficient" sub-dimension has been observed, no significant difference has been observed positive or negative in the sub dimension of "predicting the cause ofthe problem". No significant difference has been observed amongst the pretest and posttest scores of "asking questions about the problem, defining the elements of the problem, difference of the object from the known, predicting the outcomes of certain actions, finding the most suitable solution, choosing the most unusual solutions among many possible solutions, realizing and identifying the problem of the children" of the control group. When the final test scores of the experiment group and control group are compared, it has been observed that there is a significant difference among the posttest of the total scores of problem solving skills, asking questions about the problem, identifying the elements of the problem, using the objects different from the unknown and choosing the most unusual solutions among many possible solutions while no significant difference among the posttests on the sub dimensions of "realizing the problem, deciding whether the knowledge for the problem solving is sufficient and predicting the outcomes of certain actions". It has been observed in the posttest scores of the children in the experiment and control groups that there is a significant difference among the sub-dimensions of "identifying the problem, predicting the cause of the problem and finding the most suitable solution". When the mean ranks were analyzed, it has been determined that the average of the posttest scores of the children in the experiment group are higher in the aforementioned sub-dimensions. No significant difference has been observed when the posttest scores of the children in the experiment groups were analyzed on the basis of gender. The findings of the research have been discussed in accordance with the related literature. Suggestions have been made for the theoretical and applied researches to be conducted in the future.