The effects of flipped learning model on primary school students' success and attitudes in English classes

As from the beginning of the 21st century, technology has rapidly started to take place in every aspect of our lives. The reflection of this on education has been just as fast. Internet, computers and other technological devices have been widely used in education as well as in our private lives. This situation has led to new searches in education. New models and approaches have been developed and implemented. One of these models is the Flipped Learning model. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of the Flipped Learning model in English language teaching on primary school students' academic achievement and attitudes to the course and to determine the views of parents on the process Mixed research method was used in the study. In the quantitative part of the research, an unequalized control group design was used; in the qualitative part of the study, a phenomenology design was used. The participants of the study consisted of 116 students in the 4th grade of a primary school in the center of a province in the Eastern Anatolia Region and 15 parents of these students who were determined on the basis of volunteerism. Fifty-eight students were in the experimental group and 58 students were in the control group. In the implementation process of the study, the Flipped Learning Model was applied with the students in the experimental group within the subjects of "My Clothes" and "My Friends" in the English lesson at the primary school 4th grade level, while the traditional teaching continued with the students in the control group. The application was carried out for seven weeks. In the research process, data were collected quantitatively with the "English Achievement Test" developed within the content of the thesis, qualitatively with the "Attitude Scale Towards English Lesson" developed by İzgi (2012) and qualitatively with the "Parent Interview Form". The achievement test used in the study was developed by the researcher and it consists of 25 questions. The average difficulty of this achievement test was calculated as .56 and the Kuder Richardson-20 (KR-20) value was calculated as 0.88. The achievement test and attitude scale were both applied as pretest and posttest. SPSS 21 package program was used to analyze the quantitative data in the study. Normality tests, kurtosis and skewness values were taken into consideration during the analysis of quantitative data. In this context, paired groups t test and independent groups t test were used among parametric tests. In the analysis of qualitative data, content analysis method was used and research findings were formed. In accordance with the findings obtained, it was obtained that there was no differentiation in student achievement and attitudes to the course in the English course conducted by applying the flipped learning model at the primary school level. In addition, it was concluded that the students within the content of the study watched the videos that they had to watch in the out-of-class application of the model both in the context of preparation for the lesson and exams, and that they had the opportunity to watch each video more than once. At the same time, it was seen that there were cognitive benefits such as the course videos being explanatory, enabling lesson repetition, making the student prepared for the lesson, and affective benefits such as increasing the student's interest and curiosity in the lesson. In the meantime, technical problems such as accessing the videos from time to time, internet access problems, and students getting bored because of the duration of the videos are also among the results obtained. While these results reveal that the flipped learning model is not effective in English language teaching compared to the traditional method in the context of the application, it is also seen that it attracts learners' interest and curiosity. In this respect, it is suggested that the implementation period should be kept longer; the implementation group should be selected from different age/grade levels and socio-economic environments and the results should be compared; and different studies that allow classroom observations to contribute to the research findings should be reorganized and conducted.