The effect of problem based learning to attitudes, success and retention in social studies

ABSTRACT The most important function of education is to educate children as good citizens. Education should be a preparation for life and the society by teaching the culture, history and institutions of the country and enabling the young to gain knowledge about the social behaviours and social roles in the society and showing them what they need to be succesful in life and the opportunities provided by the society. In Turkey the whole knowledge and the part of these skills are given via social studies course of elementary schools. Social Studies is a course in which students are taught information involving many new concepts and principles. In Turkey because of the nature of it is perceived by teachers, students, and parents as a course which reguires memorizatioa This perception then results in negative attitutes towards Social Studies Course. In Social Studies Course, it is not possible to have students behave in a certain way through transfering knowledge alone, or, in other words, through conventional teaching methods. Thus, to change the perception and the attitudes of Social Studies Course, to increase students' success different teaching approaches need to be used in the classroom. One of the different approaches is constructivism of which the classroom aplication is problem-based learning. This study investigates whether problem-based learning has an effect an attitude, success in the classroom and how much of the information is retained. The study was conducted in Eskişehir Yüzüncü Yıl Elementary School. 2002-2003 Fall semester, with 4th grade students. Subjects were divided into two groups-one the control group while the other the experimental group. In this study, a questionnaire, an attitude scale to determine students attitude towards Social Studies Course, and pre/post tests were administered to collect data. IVThe data obtained was analysed by a computer programme SPSS; with a significance level of.05 as the level of aritmetic mean, standard deviation, t test, percentage and differences between percentages were made use of to analyza the data. After statistical analysis in this research, the following results were obtained: 1. There was a significant difference between the attitudes of control group students and those of experimental group. 2. There was a significant difference between the success of control group and experimental group, experimental group being more successful than the control group. 3. There was a significant difference in how much information is retained between the control group and the experimental group.