Investigation of Incidental Learning in a Mathematical Activity on Secondary School Students by Their Success

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the incidental learning level of students by their academic success. The study group consists of 90 students at the 7th grade of a public school. Two tests with central and incidental tasks were used as the data collection tools, consecutively. In order to analyzes the data, descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis H and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests were used. Considering the study findings, it was seen that the students, who were successful at the
achievement tests with central tasks, scored low on incidental tasks while the students who were not successful at the central tasks and whose success at mathematics was considered to be low, got high scores from the incidental tasks. It was observed as a result of the study that the students with low success focused on the distracting information given in the question while the successful students did not focus on the distracting information in the question but concentrated on solving the question during the activity. This study reveals that the students, who are considered to be unsuccessful at mathematics, can be successful if the distracting factors are controlled as they also learn during the activity.