The Effect of Reflective Thinking Based Geography Education on Student Success and Retention of Learning

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of reflective thinking based teaching activities in geography teaching on students' academic achievement and retention of learning. In the research, experimental design with "pre-post-test and control group" was used and research was carried on an experimental group (30 students) and a control group (30 students) selected from Aksaray Hazim Kulak High School 9th grade students. To collect data, "Academic Achievement Test" developed by the researcher was used. Experimental studies continued for eight weeks. Throughout the experimental study, the course was carried out in the experimental group with the educational activities based on reflective thinking while in the control group it was conducted with the suggested educational activities in the program. Data collection tools were applied to the experimental and the control groups as the pre-test and post-test before and after the treatment. Furthermore, to determine the retention of learning, data collection tool was applied again in both group five weeks later than the experimental treatment. The data obtained in this study were analysed with the SPSS 14.00 program for frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation values, by using t-test for independent groups and t-test techniques for dependent groups. According to the findings after the experimental treatment; in terms of academic achievement scores and academic achievement retention test scores between the experimental group students receiving geography education based on reflective thinking activities and the control group students receiving geography education with suggested teaching activities in the program, there was a statistically significant difference in favour of the experimental group students. There was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group students' academic achievement and academic achievement retention test scores with regards to gender variable. The results obtained from this study indicate that educational activities based on reflective thinking in the geography teaching affect students' academic achievement and retention of learning positively.