Attitudes of elementary school students towards solving mathematics problems

Abstract

There are many factors that have an effect on learning. As known, learning takes place in cognitive, affective and psychomotor areas. Currently, affective area has been recognized both as a part of education and the focus point of studies. Affective characteristics often play role in learning that takes place in schools. One of these affective characteristics is student attitude towards the course. Unfortunately it is acknowledged that students have been developing negative attitude towards mathematics since the early years of their lives. In this sense, purpose of this study is to analyze the attitudes of elementary school students towards problem solving. Working group of the study covers elementary school students. "Attitude Scale for Mathematics Problem Solving" developed by Canakci and Ozdemir (2011) was employed as data collection tool to measure the attitudes of students towards problem solving. The scale has two dimensions called "enjoyment" and "teaching". At the end of the study, it was seen that there was a decrease in the level of "enjoyment" dimension as the grade level increased. This decrease became a significant difference for eighth grades. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.