Examination of Studies Aimed at Developing Map Skills in Secondary School Students: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to determine the effect of map skills studies conducted for secondary school students on students' academic success and to synthesize research findings. For this purpose, the results of the experimental studies were analyzed in the research by meta-analysis method. Studies within the scope of the research were survey with the main keywords such as map, secondary school, map skill, map literacy and obtained from the database of the National Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education. In the collection of data, the coding form prepared by the researchers in accordance with the inclusion criteria was used. As a result of the literature, 10 studies were reached on the subject, including 7 Master's and 3 doctoral theses that meet the inclusion criteria. The studies were analyzed by transferring them to the CMA 3 (Comprehensive Meta-Analysis) program. In the data analysis, standard deviation, arithmetic mean and sample size values were used from the pretest-posttest measurements of the experimental and control group of the related studies. In the study, the effect size was calculated using the random effects model due to the fact that heterogeneity was observed among the studies included in the meta-analysis. The effect size of the study was interpreted according to Thalheimer and Cook (2002), and the effect size of the study was very broad, and the studies covered by the research had a positive effect on improving academic success. The results obtained in the study showed that studies aimed at improving map skills in the teaching process increased student success.