مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Evaluation of Writing to Learn Activities for Teaching Astronomy

Abstract :

Various methods and techniques are used in science lessons in order to provide meaningful and long-term learning. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of writing to learn activities for teaching astronomy concepts on students’ academic achievements, conceptual comprehension, science process skills and students’ attitude toward science in science lessons. The study was done in a middle school in Istanbul. The participant of this study is 114 seventh grade students. The unit about solar system was taught by writing to learn activities for the students in experiment group, whereas the students in control group were taught by traditional teaching methods. The study is based on quantitative research methodology and an experimental design was used. In order to collect data, the achievement test, the conceptual understanding test, the science process skills test and the attitude towards science scale were used for both pre- and post-test. The data were analyzed with ANCOVA. According to the findings of the study, teaching astronomy concepts with writing to learn activities has a meaningful impact on students’ successes. On the other hand, although experimental group has higher post-test mean scores, there is no meaningful difference on students’ conceptual understanding, science process skills and attitude towards science between control and experimental groups. In order to reveal the effects of writing to learn activities in science lessons, there should be further studies by using this approach.