The effect of secondary school students' mathematical metacognition awareness on their non-routine problem solving skills

This study aims to examine the effect of secondary school students' mathematical metacognitive awareness on non-routine problem-solving skills. The sample of the research consists of 84 7th-grade students, including 1 experimental group and 2 control groups, studying in a secondary school in Gaziantep/Şahinbey district. A pre-test-post-test design with an unbalanced control group from quasi-experimental studies was used. As a data collection tool in the research, "the Mathematical Metacognition Awareness Inventory" to measure mathematical metacognitive awareness, a multiple choice "Mathematics Achievement Test" created by the researcher to measure non-routine problem-solving skills, and "interview questions" created to get the opinions of the experimental students.' used. In the quantitative analysis, Saimples t-test, Anova test, and coding method in the qualitative analysis were used with the help of IBM SPSS22. While there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the mathematical achievement test and mathematical metacognition awareness inventories of the experimental group, in which mathematical metacognitive awareness studies were carried out, no significant difference was found between the first-test and post-test scores of the control 1 and control 2 groups, which were given normal education. From the qualitative analysis of the data obtained from the interview questions asked to the experimental group students, the greatest improvement in the experimental group students was the increase in problem-solving skills. In the problem-solving processes, first of all, an improvement was observed in understanding the problem, it was seen that this caused a slowdown in the problem-solving process at first, but significantly facilitated the problem-solving in the later processes. First of all, it has been seen that the first strategy is likened to the problems they have solved before, if this situation does not create the desired effect, they tend to determine a new strategy.