Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

• F. Sedighi Motlagh ¹
• M. Roshanian Ramin ²
• H. Khademii ³

¹ Department of Education, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

² Department of Educational Technology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

³ Department of Psychology and Education of Exceptional Children, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Mathematics is one of the main subjects of the primary school and requires special attention; so, to improve the progress of mathematics, the role of motivational factors, especially attitudes towards mathematics, should be considered, and teaching methods should create interest in this lesson. In this regard, the present study was conducted with the aim of examining the impact of game-based education on the attitude and learning of mathematics among primary school female students.
Methods: The research method in this study was a quasi-experiment of the pretest-posttest design with the experimental-control groups. The statistical papulation included all female students of the first-grade of primary school in the academic year 1401-1402 in Mallard. The research sample was selected by using the available sampling method. Thus, from among the primary schools of Mallard, the girls' primary school of Iran2 was selected, and from among four classes in the first-grade of this school, two classes were selected; then, the students of these two classes (62 students) were sorted by the average math score from low to high, then from above two people were selected and one person was randomly assigned to the experimental group and one person was assigned to the control group. The research tool consisted of five non-digital games that designed and implemented by the researchers. First, the pretest of learning math and the test of attitudes to math lessons were given to both groups; then the topics (familiarity with numbers, addition of numbers, and familiarity with the single-decimal table) were taught in the classroom by the researcher in five sessions of forty-five minutes (with the pretest and posttest session, a total of 7 sessions) in the experimental group via games. At the same time, these topics were taught in the control group in five sessions of forty-five minutes (with a pre-test and post-test session of 7 sessions) in a traditional and common way implemented by the class teacher; then, posttest was administered. The data collection tool in the research included the Aiken math attitude questionnaire, which covered three sub-scales (enjoying math lessons, fear of math and valuing and caring about math lessons). Reliability of the questionnaires were 0.887, 0.841, 0.912, respectively. Second tool was the researcher-made mathematics learning test. The validity of this test was confirmed by the first-grade teachers and reliability was obtained as 0.81 with Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used to analyze data and covariance analysis was used in the inferential statistics section.
Findings: The data analysis indicated that the use of the game would influence the attitude and mathematical learning of the first-grade female students, and therefore, the main hypothesis of the research as “game-based education would have an effect on improving the attitude and mathematical learning of the first-grade female students” was confirmed. Other research hypotheses were confirmed at a meaningful level of 0.001.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that students learn and remember lessons better via applying games and they enjoy this way of learning more and become more active and dynamic, and the learning process would accelerate.

Keywords

• Game-Based Education
• Attitude to Math
• Learning Math

Main Subjects

• Gamification

COPYRIGHTS 
© 2024 The Author(s).  This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)