Effects of the Science Writing Heuristic Approach on Primary School Students’ Science Achievement and Attitude toward Science Course

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of implementing inquiry based laboratory activities through using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) on students’ science achievement and also effects of attitude on approach of student and toward science course. Quasi-experimental pre- and post-test design, with semi-structured interviews and retention test were applied. The study involved 3 different 6th grade classes and one teacher from primary school in Erzurum at the second half of 2006-2007 academic year. One class of those three classes was randomly selected as a control group and other two classes were selected as the treatment group before beginning the study. In the control group, the students were instructed by using traditional didactic approach. With the traditional approach the teacher used direct instruction method, gave the information directly, and student only listened to the teacher, and rarely answered question of teacher. At the end of each subtopic students went through problem solving activity by using questions at the end of their book chapter. One of treatment groups engage in inquiry based laboratory activities through using the SWH approach and prepared SWH report for each activity. The second treatment group in addition first treatment group activities has prepared self-evaluation reports for the each SWH activity. In study, unit based academic achievement test with 16 multiple choices and 8 conceptual questions was used as pre- and post-test and the retention test 8 months after the implementation. Analysis of reliability measurement on the post-test scores indicated that the Cronbach’s alpha value was 0, 74. Also at the end of the study semi-structured interviews were conducted with randomly selected 6 students in the control group and 16 students in the treatment group. Results from the analyses indicated that there was no difference between the groups on the pre-test measures. Analysis of post-test scores yielded that there was a significant difference between the control group and the treatment groups on the unit based science achievement test. Also, the findings from the analysis of the interviews supports those findings obtained from statistical analyses.