The Effect of Activities Based on REACT Strategy in Social Studies Courses on Students' Academic Achievement, Attitudes Towards Social Studies Courses and on the Retention of Learning

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of teaching activities and materials organized in accordance with REACT strategy within the scope of the 5th grade unit “People, Places and Environments” on students' academic achievement, attitudes towards social studies courses and on the retention of learning. The research was carried out with a total of 60 students in two classes attending 5th grade in a secondary school in Aydın in the fall semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. A quasi-experimental research design, a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest was used in the research. The classes were determined as control group and experimental group via random sampling method. There were 30 students in the experimental group and 30 students in the control group. While the teaching activities organized according to REACT strategy were applied in the experimental group, the courses were instructed according to the teaching activities in the textbook prepared by the Ministry of National Education in the control group. Achievement test, retention test and attitude scale for social studies course were used as data collection tools. All the application process lasted 6 weeks. In the analysis of the data, independent groups t-test, ANOVA for repeated measures, ANCOVA Mann Whitney-U test and Wilcoxon test were used. Upon examining the data obtained from data collection tools, it has been observed that there is a significant difference in favor of the experimental group between the students' academic achievement and their attitudes towards the social studies courses. In the retention test results, it was determined that although the average of the students in the experimental group was higher, there was no statistically significant difference. This study is important for the experimental use of REACT strategy in social studies course for the first time. In addition, as a result of the study, information was offered about the cases encountered during the experimental application, and some suggestions were made regarding the points that need attention.