Traditional methods of instruction do not typically provide students with an opportunity to engage in many of the 21st century skills and become a scientifically literate individual. Therefore, to better prepare students for society in 21st century, authentic, active learning strategies are proposed to be implemented. According to Moylan (2008) project based learning (PBL) is a key methodology to fill the learning gap between today's students and the development of essential 21st century knowledge and skills. Project-based learning is defined as “an instructional model based on having students confront real-world issues and problems that they find meaningful, determine how to address them, and then act in a collaborative fashion to create problem solutions.” (Bender, 2012, p.1). Accordingly, project-based learning (PBL) has been proposed as a strategy that encourages students to use, develop, and acquire 21st century skills (Bell, 2010; Hughes, 2012) and become scientifically literate people which is one of the most basic purposes of science education (BouJaoude, 2002; Wilkins, Zembylas, & Travers, 2002). According to Habok and Nagy (2016), the success of the PBL associate with the number of student activities and the characteristics of learning environment: the PBL learning environment should enable students to think critically and work creatively and collaboratively when face with a new challenge (Bender, 2012). Such an environment allow students make not only in depth exploration, but also identify constraints that they may experience in real-life situations and improve their skills to deal with these situations (Talat & Chaudhry, 2014). Moreover, a learning environment including activities from students’ real-life condition,  can contribute students' scientific literacy because in such environments students can find opportunities  to  identify  questions,  acquire new  knowledge,  express  scientific  phenomena,  and  make inferences on  facts (Holubova, 2008; Schwartz, Tessman, & Mcdonald, 2013). History of science (HOS) is also one of the most recommended strategy for achieving scientific literacy (Cansız, 2014; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). According to Matthews (1994), history of science has numerous benefits for science education including teaching science content, creating authentic learning environments, developing reasoning and thinking skills, and cultivating interest and attitude in science through humanizing it.

Therefore, it is thought that using project based learning and history of science (PBL-HOS) in science classes can be a good way to improve students’ scientific literacy and their 21the century skills like communication, creativity, problem solving, and collaboration. When the related accessible literature is examined, there was no empirical study using project based learning and history of science together. However, before testing the effect of the PBL-HOS instruction on some target variables, such as scientific literacy or 21th century skills, firstly designing and implementing a series of activities based on PBL-HOS instruction, and taking students’ and teachers’ views on these activities were needed to determine the applicability and suitability of the activities for the student, and to improve its possible influences on the target variables. Thus, exploring students’ perceptions and experiences related to PBL-HOS instruction would enable to improve the activities by overcoming the deficiencies, as well as to give clues about the impact of activities on target outcomes.

Overall, the purpose of this study was to investigate seventh grade students’ and teachers’ perceptions and experiences about the project based learning enriched with history of science as first step to improve the effectiveness of the implementation on target variables, more specifically, scientific literacy and 21the century skills. In line with this purpose, the research question was identified as “What are the perceptions and experiences of seventh grade students on PBL-HOS instruction?”

In order to investigate this research question, case study was adopted as a research design. The case in this study was implementation involving PBL-HOS instruction. In this implementation, students attended the various activities which are planned on the basis of PBL-HOS instruction for 16 class hours. These activities were bounded by the objectives suggested in “force and energy” unit of national science curriculum (MoNE, 2018). In this instruction, students worked on a science project. The theme of the project was amusement parks, and thus most of the activities and examples used during the instruction were about the vehicles and their working principles in the amusement parks. The project had a big question, which was how the fastest, safest and least costly roller coaster can be designed. Students also engaged in activities including historical science stories. The implementation was conducted with a sample including 37 Grade 7 students (20 female, 17 male), in a public school. At the end of the implementation, views of the students and the teacher about the whole instruction processes were obtained through a written form including five main open-ended questions with twelve sub questions. The first author also made observations and took field notes during the implementation. This study focuses just on students’ and teacher’s views. The data obtained were analyzed using content analysis. As a result of the content analysis, five categories were derived from data. These were enjoying instruction, degree of difficulty, receiving more instructions like PBL-HOS, benefits of the PBL-HOS instruction, and suggestions for improvement. The findings are presented under these categories and exemplified by quotations from the responses.

In terms of enjoying instruction,building roller coaster(n=20) and experiments(n=12) were reported to be the most liked activities, while filling the activity forms was the most disliked one(n=8).Regarding degree of difficulty, most of the students found building roller coaster was hard(n=27), while the experiments(n=12) and stories(n=8) was easy.Concerning receiving an instruction similar to PBL-HOS in the subsequent class sessions,most of the students stated that they want to engage more in such activities because it was instructive(n=17) and enjoyable(n=11).However, some of the students’ views were negative because they found it less effective(n=3), harder(n=2), and time consuming(n=1) than the curriculum oriented instruction.Regarding, benefits of this instruction, most of the students reported that this project helped better understanding, attracted their interest, provided them with an opportunity to solve daily life problems and to think creatively, supported their communication and collaboration with friends.Regarding the suggestions for improvement, most of the students(n=20) stated that there is no suggestion for improvement of project because it was good enough.One student thought that this process was not like an instruction, instead, it was like a game, and thus it did not help to become prepared for the exams.Moreover, opinions of the science teacher about the instruction were taken via open-ended questions. He stated that the project helped students have a better understanding, develop different perspectives, improve their ability to work within groups, and gain a team spirit.Overall, opinions of both the students and the teacher and field notes of the researcher indicated that the planned PBL-HOS activities can be implemented with some minor revisions.When the revised activities are conducted, it is expected that the implementation can contribute to students’ scientific-literacy and 21st century-skills as proposed because according to the participants’ opinions, the implementation adds to students’ understanding, attracts their interest, support cooperation, problem solving, creative thinking, and communication skills.

Bell, S. (2010). Project-based learning for the 21st century: Skills for the future. The clearing house, 83(2), 39-43. Bender, W. N. (2012). Project-based learning: Differentiating instruction for the 21st century. Corwin Press. BouJaoude, S. (2002). Balance of scientific literacy themes in science curricula: The case of Lebanon. International Journal of Science Education, 24(2), 139-156. Cansız, M. (2014). The effect of history of science instruction on elementary students' scientific literacy. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Middle East Technical University. Habók, A., & Nagy, J. (2016). In-service teachers’ perceptions of project-based learning. SpringerPlus, 5(1), 1-14. Holubova, R. (2008). Effective Teaching Methods--Project-based Learning in Physics. Online Submission, 5(12), 27-36. Hughes, S.R. (2012). Exploring the 21st Century Skills Used During a Project-Based Learning Experience at the Secondary Level. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Walden University. Matthews, M. R. (1994). Science teaching: The role of history and philosophy of science. New York: Routledge. MoNE (Ministry of National Education). (2018). İlköğretim kurumlari (ilkokullar ve ortaokullar) fen bilimleri dersi (3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ve 8. siniflar) öğretim programı [Primary and secondary schools science curriculum (grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8)]. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Talim ve Terbiye Kurulu Başkanlığı. Moylan, W. A. (2008). Learning by project: Developing essential 21st century skills using student team projects. International Journal of Learning, 15(9). Rutherford, F.J., & Ahlgren, A. (1990). Science for all Americans. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Schwartz, K., Tessman, D., & McDonald, D. (2013). The value of relevant, project-based learning to youth development. Journal of Youth Development, 8(1), 65-71. Talat, A., & Chaudhry, H.F. (2014). The Effect of PBL and 21st Century Skills on Students’ Creativity and Competitiveness in Private Schools. The Lahore Journal of Business 2 (2), 89–114. Wilkins, J. L., Zembylas, M., & Travers, K. J. (2002). Investigating correlates of mathematics and science literacy in the final year of secondary school. In Secondary analysis of the TIMSS data (pp. 291-316). Springer, Dordrecht.