Abstract

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effects of physical education lessons planned in accordance with cooperative learning approach on secondary school students’ problem solving skills. The research was conducted on 48 students studying at Konya/Selçuklu Åžehit Mustafa Çuhadar Secondary School in fall semester of 2015-2016 school year. The research utilized an experiment (24 students) and a control (24 students) group. In order to investigate the effects of physical education lessons planned in accordance with cooperative learning approach on students’ problem solving skills, “Problem Solving Inventory for Primary School Children” developed by Serin et al. (2010) was implemented. Data were analysed on statistics software, using Mann Whitney-U and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests. According to the findings obtained in the present study, there are not any significant differences between experiment and control groups in terms of pre-test confidence in problem solving skill, self-control, and avoidance and total score averages (p>0.05). There are significant differences between control group pre-test and post-test scores in all dimensions and total scores, in favour of post-test (p<0.05). There are significant differences between experiment group pre-test and post-test scores in all dimensions and total scores, in favour of post-test (p<0.05). There are significant differences between experiment and control groups’ post-test scores in all sub-dimensions and total scores (p<0.05). Obtained findings showed that, problem solving skills of the experiment group students, on who cooperative learning approach was conducted, significantly increased more than control group students, on whom traditional methods were conducted, and the difference between these two groups was significant.

Key words: Cooperative learning, problem solving skills, physical education lesson.