Sınıf öğretmeni adaylarının fiziksel ve kimyasal değişme konusunda kavramsal değişim metinlerine karşı tutumları

Abstract

Kavramsal değişim metinleri, öğrencilerin kavram yanılgılarının ve sebeplerinin neler olduğunu belirten ve bu yanlış kavramaların yetersiz olduğunu örneklerle birlikte açıklayıp ortaya koyan metinlerdir. Bu araştırmanın amacı, sınıf öğretmeni adaylarının fiziksel ve kimyasal değişim konusunda kullanılan kavramsal değişim metinlerine karşı tutumlarının belirlenmesidir. Araştırma, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi 2009 yılında Sınıf Öğretmenliği Programı 1.sınıfında öğrenim gören 30 öğretmen adayı ile gerçekleştirilmişitr. Bu araştırmada deneysel araştırma modelinin kontrol grupsuz son test deseni kullanılmıştır. Veri toplama aracı olarak, Kavramsal Değişim Metni Tutum Ölçeği (KDMTÖ) kullanılmıştır. Ayrıca kavramsal değişim metinleri ile ilgili öğretmen adaylarının yazılı görüşleri alınmıştır. Veri analizinde öğretmen adaylarının tutum ölçeğindeki her bir maddeye ilişkin ortalama puanları hesaplanmıştır. Yazılı görüşler ise belli kodlar altında sınıflandırılarak nitel olarak değerlendirilmiştir. Çalışmada, tutum ölçeğinden elde edilen bulgular öğretmen adaylarının kavramsal değişim metinlerine karşı tutumlarının oldukça yüksek olduğunu göstermiştir. Öğretmen adaylarının yazılı ifadelerinden elde edilen sonuçlar da tutumun bu derece yüksek olmasını destekler niteliktedir

Introduction In order for the science teaching to be effective, it is primarily required to identify the misconceptions and then use different methods which will overcome all these misconceptions. One of the contemporary approaches to resolve existing misconceptions in students is the conceptual change approach which enables the learner to discover his/her prior knowledge and which has a positive effect on learning through conceptual change. The basis of this approach is to reveal the misconceptions that students bring to the learning environment and ensure the conceptual change into students’ minds by replacing these misconceptions with meaningful concepts in the learning environment. One strategy for the implementation of the conceptual change approach is using the conceptual change texts. Conceptual change texts are one of the leading methods which ensure meaningful learning by creating conceptual change into students’ minds and which are used to remove the misconceptions. From the studies related to conceptual change texts, it has been understood that the subject of physical and chemical change leading misconceptions has not been studied directly, and the other studies on different subjects have been mostly on the secondary education level. For this reason the study has been carried out on pre-service teachers who are different sample groups. Moreover, in the literature there are studies generally related to whether there is a relation between the understanding levels of the students to related subject and their attitudes towards the conceptual change texts, whereas there is only one study on the attitudes of the students towards the conceptual change texts. In order to find out whether these texts will be useful in other settings, it is of great importance to determine the attitudes of the students to these texts with a scale or to get opinions about using these texts in the lessons. In this sense, in this study the attitudes of the pre-service teachers towards the conceptual change texts used for teaching the subject of “physical and chemical change” have been analyzed. Method In this study, the post-test design of experimental research group without control group has been used. In the sampling, 3 weeks of teaching related to conceptual change texts on the subject of “physical and chemical change” has been carried out. Then, in order to measure students' attitude towards conceptual change texts an attitude scale has been applied. In addition, written feedbacks of the pre-service teachers related to these texts have been received after the education. The study has been conducted with 30 pre-service teachers, 1st grade students studying at Primary Education Program at Rize University. In order to determine the attitudes of the pre-service teachers towards the conceptual change texts, Attitude Scale Toward Conceptual Change Text (ASCCT) has been applied to the pre-service teachers. The ASCCT is 25-item five point Likert-Type scale whose reliability coefficient is 0,90 (Totally Agree, I Agree, Undecided, Don’t Agree, Totally Disagree). After the teaching carried out with conceptual change texts, written feedbacks of the pre-service teachers have been received about what has been the benefit of using conceptual change texts to the lessons and to themselves. In the analysis of the data gathered from ASCCT, mean scores of the pre-service teachers on each item has been calculated. In addition, the negative items have been reverse-coded, and by calculating the overall average of the attitudes of the pre-service teachers towards the conceptual change texts, the attitudes of the pre-service teachers have been evaluated according to the range it corresponds. The written feedbacks from the pre-service teachers related to conceptual text change have been evaluated qualitatively using content analysis. Findings (Results) When the data is evaluated in general, it draws attention that the affirmative items in the scale are clustered under the categories of ‘Totally Agree’ and “I Agree” and the negative items are under the categories of “Totally Disagree”. The pre-service teachers have been undecided on only one item. It is seen that there is no answer appropriate for the category “Don’t Agree” in Table 2. Also, the general average of the attitudes of the pre-service teachers towards conceptual change texts has been found to be 4.27 by reverse-coding the negative items. This overall average indicates that pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards conceptual change texts are quite high. Pre-service teachers’ views about the use of these texts in lessons seem to support this attitude to be so high. The views of the pre-service teachers are grouped in terms of the visuality of texts, meaningful long lastingness and interestingness under theme of the contribution of conceptual change texts to the lesson and students. According to this, 27 pre-service teachers have stated that visuality of the conceptual change supported with pictures facilitates understanding. 29 pre-service teachers have expressed that a using conceptual change text in lessons provides meaningful long lastingness and 25 pre-service teachers have expressed that it provides interestingness. It has been confirmed that teachers completely agree with the positive items of the attitude scale and disagree with the negative items because conceptual change texts used in lessons have been different materials for teachers with the aspects of being colourful, understandable, explanatory and suitable to reflect the teachers’ own opinions. Because of these aspects, the overall average of preservice teachers’ attitudes towards conceptual change texts has been high (4,27). Conculusion and Discussion These findings acquired by the attitude scale has showed that owing to the conceptual change texts applied to sample, pre-service teachers comprehends the subject of physical and chemical change more easily and these kinds of materials increase the attention to the lessons by ensuring the lessons to be loved. Pre-service teachers’ opinions about using these texts in lessons support the attitude’s being so high. As it is understood from the pre-service teachers’ opinions about the texts’ visuality, meaningful long-lastingness and interestingness it can be concluded that conceptual change texts are effective in increasing the interest and motivation of the pre-service teachers towards lessons and using these texts has contributed to the meaningful learning.