Abstract

The purposes of this study were to develop the customized instructional programs by the causes of science underachievement and to identify the effectiveness of these programs. For these, we analyzed the characteristics of underachievers and causes of science underachievement and classified 22 7th grade science underachievers into three different types such as lack of science process skill, lack of science learning motivation, and lack of science learning strategy. They then were divided into the experimental and comparative groups. Instructional programs treated for both groups covered the same topics and were conducted once a week for 60 minutes each time for 15 weeks. Eleven students in the comparative group were treated with an activity-centered science program that dealt with basic science concepts. Unlike science underachievers in the comparative group, those in the experimental group were given customized instructional program. After the treatment, students were administered several tests including a test on awareness of the program, science process skill test, science learning motivation and strategy test, and academic science achievement test. In addition to the results of those tests, worksheets, daily activity reports, and interviews were used to evaluate a customized instructional program that was applied to the experimental group. Results of the study showed that these programs relieved science underachievers from the cause of poor achievement and accordingly help them achieve better performance in academics. In addition, both lack of learning motivation and lack of learning strategy types tended to relieve the other causes of science underachievement. Also, the experimental group showed a high level of satisfaction with the customized instructional programs.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call