The Effect of History of Science Based Laboratory Instruction on Primary School Pre-Service Teachers' Ability and Affective Learning Domains

Author(s):

Hakki Ilker Kostur(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 12 B, Programmes and Approaches: Strategies - Settings - Tools

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-25

09:00-10:30

Room:

K5.20

Chair:

Angelika Paseka

Contribution

Today, it is impossible to keep up with the information produced every day. So, instead of memorizing scientific facts and concepts, using scientific processes and scientific method is way more important (Martin, 1997). In this century, there is a need for individuals who have skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and decision making.

In Turkish Science Curriculum, scientific literacy, nature of science, history of science, science-technology-society-environment relations are considered and aimed to be taught. In this study, main concerned concepts are science process skills, history of science, science experiments, attitudes towards science, science self-efficacy beliefs and logical thinking scores. Although this study derives from an issue about Turkish national science curriculum, aforementioned concepts attract science educators worldwide. This study attempts to combine history of science and science process skills - two different topics of science education in a science laboratory course.

The purpose of this research is to investigate whether there is a difference between the group where science process skills are taught through history of science activities (experimental group) and the group where science process skills are taught through science experiments (control group) in terms of pre-service classroom teachers' science process skills, attitudes towards science, science self-efficacy beliefs and logical thinking scores. The study group of this research is 44 sophomore pre-service classroom teachers who were registered to faculty of education of a private university. Participants were randomly attended to two sections of Science Laboratory II course in 2014-2015 spring semester.

Method

As participants were randomly enrolled to two sections of the course, this research can be called a true experimental research. Pretest-posttest control group design was used in this research. Science process skills were taught through history of science activities in experimental group and through science experiments in control group during a two-month teaching process. Activities and experiments in both groups were designed and instructed by the researcher and they are presented in the study. In order to test the hypotheses of the research, quantitative data were gathered through four scales. These scales are: a) Science Process Skills Test (SPST), b) Science Teaching Attitude Scale (STAS), c) Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instruments (STEBI), and d) The Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT). Learning domains of the Turkish science curriculum are relevant with these scales. To interpret the findings and associate them with the Turkish science curriculum, in this research, SPST and TOLT were designated to measure and represent the ability domain, and STAS and STEBI to measure and represent the affective domain of Turkish science curriculum. In addition, science experiments are related to knowledge domain and history of science activities are related to knowledge and science-technology-society-environment domain of the curriculum. Hypotheses testing were conducted with "independent samples t-Test" and "paired samples t-Test". Data were analyzed and evaluated by t-Tests after setting a significance level of .05.

Expected Outcomes

As a result, analysis showed that teaching science process skills through history of science activities (experimental group: EG) had higher statistically significant effect on ability and affective learning domains than teaching science process skills through science experiments (control group: CG). In order to summarize the results of the analysis, scores in percentages for four scales for both groups are as follows (the statistical results will be provided in main text): (CG / EG) Pre-SPST: 46% / 51% Post-SPST: 57% / 79% Pre-STAS: 71% / 72% Post-STAS: 73% / 83% Pre-STEBI: 72% / 71% Post-STEBI: 73% / 79% Pre-TOLT: 24% / 18% Post-TOLT: 57% / 68% In conclusion, suggestions will be presented in order to carry out a high performance science curriculum based on the findings of this research.

References

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Author Information

Hakki Ilker Kostur (presenting / submitting)

Baskent University

Primary Education

Ankara

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