Comparing the Effectiveness of Brainstorming and Problem Solving Teaching Methods on Academic Self-Efficacy, Motivation to Progress and Sense of Belonging to School in Students

Background &

Education is an important part of every student's life and students are considered the most important pillar of the education system of any country as they have outstanding psychological needs. Meeting the psychological needs of students is one of the biggest challenges in education. In the past decades, belonging to educational fields has been of interest. Researchers emphasize the importance of a school environment that facilitates a sense of community and belonging among students. The sense of belonging to the school has several benefits for the psychosocial development of students. Belonging to the school is "the extent to which students are personally accepted, respected, included and supported by others in the social environment of the school". This feeling is related to student's well-being, and having a sense of belonging to school is positively related to student performance, achievement motivation, social-emotional functioning, classroom behavior, and academic success, and it is also negatively related to school dropout. Students who have a sense of belonging to the school have social adaptation and academic success and are more successful in achieving higher educational degrees; Therefore, having a sense of belonging to the school is understood as a prerequisite for the overall performance of the school, and the relationship between the student and the school is of great importance. The feeling of belonging to school is a factor in increasing students' academic self-efficacy. Students who have academic self-efficacy show different characteristics, the most obvious of which is the feeling of belonging to the school, which has many effects on the personal and academic aspects of students. Academic self-efficacy refers to personal beliefs about one's abilities to organize and implement academic courses to achieve set standards and academic performance. This construct is known as a key predictor of student's academic performance and is one of the main areas of learning. Improving academic self-efficacy beliefs in students can improve their academic motivation. One of the new methods that can be effective in improving academic self-efficacy is motivation for progress.This study compared the effectiveness of brainstorming and problem-solving teaching methods on academic self-efficacy, motivation to progress, and sense of belonging to a school in tenth-grade students of public schools in Arak city. This research was applied in terms of purpose and semi-experimental in terms of methodology with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group.

This research was conducted in three stages: pre-test, intervention, and post-test. In the pre-test stage, all the samples answered the standard research questionnaires. After selecting experiment groups 1 and 2, the brainstorming teaching method was used in group one and the problem-solving teaching method in group 2. The control group remained without intervention. In the post-test stage, the sample answered the research questionnaires again.

The statistical population of this research was all tenth-grade students of public schools in Arak city, of which 45 students were selected using the available method and were randomly divided into 2 training groups and 1 control group. Sample people in the pre-test stage to Mouton et al.'s school belonging questionnaires (1996); Jinks and Morgan's academic self-efficacy (1999); Achievement motivation Hermans (1980) answered. The brainstorming method test was performed on the first group, and on the second group, the problem-solving method protocol test was performed in 8 sessions. In the post-test stage, the sample answered the research questionnaires. The resulting data were analyzed using the covariance analysis method in SPSS24 software.

The present study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of brainstorming and problem-solving teaching methods on academic self-efficacy, progress motivation, and sense of belonging to the school in the tenth-grade students of public schools in Arak city. This research sought to answer the question that which of the teaching methods of brainstorming and problem-solving are more effective on academic self-efficacy, motivation to progress, and sense of belonging to the school of the student. The obtained results showed that the brainstorming method is the implementation of a group method to solve a problem, especially by presenting all the ideas of the students, because they freely express all the materials that come to their minds about the subject, and unconsciously and quickly from the findings and knowledge. They use their previous ones and present them to the class, so it can be effective in increasing the feeling of belonging to the school. Teaching students, with this method, increases the possibility of solving problems creatively, in this teaching method, they learn to facilitate the communication between solutions and ideas, new solutions that are proposed by their friends, and New ideas become familiar and they can use these ideas and solutions when necessary, for this reason, a sense of empathy is created between students, which is an example of a sense of belonging to the school. In this method, the class comes out of the state of stagnation and laziness, and in general, the classroom comes out of the state of being repetitive and brings diversity and relief from fatigue and happiness, this point can make the school and learning environment pleasant for students, and students are able Extra energy to be present in the classroom. It indicated the effect of both brainstorming and problem-solving teaching methods on academic self-efficacy, progress motivation, and sense of belonging to the school, and the comparison of effectiveness indicates the greater effect of brainstorming on the research variables. Therefore, teachers and educational planners can be advised to use this method in teaching students.