Effectiveness of the PROR Strategy in Physics Achievement and Reflective Thinking among Second-Year Intermediate Female Students

Abstract

The current research aims to identify the effectiveness of the PROR strategy in the achievement of physics and reflective thinking among second-year middle school female students. To achieve the two objectives of the research, the following two null hypotheses were formulated:

§ There is no statistically significant difference at the level of significance (0.05) between the average scores of the female students of the experimental group who will study according to the (PROR) strategy and the average scores of the female students of the control group who will study in the usual way in the achievement test.” There is no statistically significant difference at the significance level (0.05) between the average scores of the female students in the experimental group who will study according to the PROR strategy and the average scores of the female students in the control group who will study in the usual way on the reflective thinking scale.

 The current research was limited to a sample of female students in the second intermediate grade in government day schools in the governorate center of the Diwaniyah Education Directorate for the academic year (2024-2025). An experimental design with partial control was adopted for two equal groups (the experimental group and the control group) with post-tests for both achievement and reflective thinking. According to this design, the research sample (Al-Intifada Intermediate School for Boys) was chosen randomly by lottery. The research sample consisted of (60) female students. The two groups were as follows: the control group (30) female students, and the experimental group (30) female students. It was confirmed that the two research groups were equal in variables related to the experiment, which are: (age in months, intelligence, previous achievement in physics, reflective thinking). The scientific material included chapters (sixth and seventh) of the physics book for the second intermediate grade, and a set of behavioral objectives for the academic content was formulated, reaching (56) objectives according to Bloom’s classification with its three levels (knowledge, understanding, application), and the researcher prepared (14) A teaching plan for both the experimental group and the same for the control group. As for the two research tools, the researcher prepared an achievement test, consisting of (30) items that were an objective item of the multiple choice type with four alternatives. The apparent validity and content validity of the tool were confirmed, and also the difficulty coefficient, the discrimination of the items, and the effectiveness of the alternatives were extracted. The Cronbach’s alpha equation was used to calculate the reliability, which amounted to (0.821), as for the other tool (reflective thinking scale) The researcher adopted the (Fadl 2021) scale for the intermediate stage, which consists of (30) items. The face validity and construct validity were confirmed, and the reliability coefficient was found using the Cronbach’s alpha equation, which reached (0.887). The experiment extended for a period of (8 weeks) from the first semester of the academic year (2024-2025), with three lessons per week for both the experimental group and the control group. After the end of the experiment, the two tools were applied to the two research groups, and the data was collected and processed statistically using the Statistical Analysis Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and the (EXEL) program, and the results appeared:

 1 - There is a statistically significant difference between the female students of the experimental group and the control group in the achievement test for physics, in favor of the experimental group. 2 - There is a statistically significant difference between the female students of the experimental group and the control group on the reflective thinking scale, in favor of the experimental group.

In light of the extracted results, the researcher reached a set of conclusions, recommendations and proposals, including adopting the (PROR) strategy in teaching physics, and conducting similar studies with other dependent variables and for different educational stages.