Influence of problem-based teaching and learning of grammar on pupils’ attainment in primary school

Abstract

With the purpose of getting an insight into the effects of problem-based teaching and learning, an experiment was carried out by using the method of parallel groups on the sample of 204 pupils in the third and sixth grade of primary school. The results of final knowledge assessment showed that problem-based teaching and learning of grammar had positive influence on pupils' attainment comparing to the usual way of learning grammar. A significant improvement has been achieved in the field of reproductive and productive grammar knowledge on the whole sample of pupils as well as on the subsamples of pupils in the third and sixth grade. Because of the limited time left for this experimental programme, the reproductive knowledge of pupils was bigger than the productive knowledge. It has been noticed that regarding the successfulness of solving the grammatical problems, there was no difference between the pupils of younger and older primary school age, in the situation when these problems were decided on according to their age and intellectual abilities. All pupils had made an improvement, but they remained within the range of their marks in Serbian language. In addition to this, better progress was made by the pupils with better marks in Serbian language. Girls were more successful than boys, but the difference between boys and girls was smaller regarding the reproductive knowledge than the productive knowledge.