The Effect of Integrating Pre- and Post-Laboratory Discussion into Guided Inquiry on Developing Science Process Skills

Author(s):

Esra YardimciGulsen Bagci Kilic Duygu Metin

Conference:

ECER 2010

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 07 D, Research on Programmes and Pedagogical Approaches in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2010-08-26

15:30-17:00

Room:

AUDITORIUM XIII, Päärakennus / Main Building

Chair:

Peter Gray

Contribution

Inquiry was found effective in developing science process skills in many years (Tatar, 2006; Tatar, Korkmaz and Ören, 2007). Since inquiry provides students with opportunities to do real science and help them apply science process skills in authentic contexts. Pre- and post-laboratory discussions were useful in making students think about the subject under study at the beginning of the laboratory and making important points explicit at the end of the laboratory (Smith, 1971 and Tamir, 1977). Combination of both would be interesting to apply at a laboratory to take advantages of both of them. This study reports such a laboratory application.

Science process skills are an important element of scientific literacy and contemporary science education programs in European countries containing Turkey emphasize science process skills. Science teachers are the ones who would help students developing science process skills. Thus, they have to develop science process skills on themselves before graduating from faculties of education. Science teacher education programs also emphasize science process skills and best courses for developing science process skills are laboratory courses in which they were supposed to conduct experiments. In this study, such a laboratory course was designed to develop pre-service science teachers’ science process skills.Laboratory course was a one-term course lasted four-hour in the second year of Elementary Science Teacher Education Program and applied in the spring semester of the year of 2008.

Method

Guided-inquiry combined with pre- and post-lab discussion was tried and its effectiveness on developing science process skills was searched in this study. In the experimental group (40) the methodology was the combination of guided-inquiry with pre- and post-lab discussion whereas the methodology applied in control group (30) was only guided-inquiry. A science process skills test (Aydogdu, 2006) was applied as pre- and post-test. Independent t-test will be applied. In the pre-lab discussion at the experimental group, participants were motivated toward the subject of the week and they were asked to design experiments to conduct their inquiry. In the post-lab discussion, they were invited to reflect their conceptual learning and which scientific process skills that they applied in their inquiry. In the control group, the laboratory sessions was ended when they completed their inquiry activities without any reflection of science process skills used.

Expected Outcomes

Although this study was conducted almost two years ago, data were not analyzed yet. But, this study is researchers’ second study. In the first study, the same research design was applied with pre-service elementary teachers who are trained for teaching as class (home) teachers from first to fifth grades. The laboratory course in their teacher education program was two-hour course. Results of that study showed that there was not a significant difference between science process skills of pre-service teachers in experimental and control group at both pre- and post-test. It was concluded that integration of pre- and post-lab discussion into guided-inquiry did not make a difference in developing science process skills. On the other hand, the researchers thought that two-hour laboratory session was not long enough to apply pre- and post-lab discussions effectively and they wonder what would be the result of this research if it were applied in a longer laboratory course. They conducted this study at four-hour long laboratory course in an Elementary Science Teacher Education Program. Only participants and the duration of the laboratory course were different in this study. The researchers expect to find a significant difference between experimental and control group since the period of laboratory session was longer.

References

References Aydoğdu, B. (2006). İlköğretim fen ve teknoloji dersinde bilimsel süreç becerilerini etkileyen değişkenlerin belirlenmesi. Yayınlanmamış yüksek lisans tezi, Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü, İzmir. Smith, J. P. (1971). The development of a classroom observation inventory relevant to the earth science curriculum project. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 8, 231-235. Tamir, P. (1977). How are the laboratories used? Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 14, 311-316. Tatar, N. (2006). İlköğretim Fen Eğitiminde Araştırmaya Dayalı Öğrenme Yaklaşımının Bilimsel Süreç Becerilerine, Akademik Başarıya Ve Tutuma Etkisi. Yayınlanmamış . Doktora Tezi, Gazi üniversitesi, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Ankara. Tatar, N., Korkmaz, H. Ve Şaşmaz Ören, F. (2007). Araştırmaya dayalı fen laboratuvarlarında bilimsel süreç becerilerini geliştirmede etkili araçlar: Vee ve I diyagramları. Ilköğretim Online, 6 (1), 76-92.

Author Information

Esra Yardimci

Abant Izzet Baysal University

Elementary Science Education

BOLU

Gulsen Bagci Kilic

Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey

Duygu Metin