Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the 9th, 10th and 11th grade of secondary education students' conceptual understanding levels and attitudes regarding Force and Motion and the change according to the variables of gender and class level. The research sample is composed of 110 students in a state school in Ankara. 'Force Concept Inventory Test' and 'Attitude Scale towards Force and Motion' were used as data collection tools in the research in which the descriptive method was used. Results of the research, it was seen that the students' conceptual understanding levels regarding this concept were low. The class level were investigated, both the conceptual understanding levels and attitudes of the 9th grade students were observed to be in better level in terms of mean scores than the levels of the others. Conceptual understanding levels of 9th grade students differ meaningfully when compared with other grades. There were meaningful differences in favor of the males in the change of the students' conceptual understanding levels regarding Force and Motion according to gender. There were meaningful differences regarding the attitude between the 9th and 11th grade students and these differences were in favor of the males. Attitude scores of the 10th grade students did not change according to the factor of gender. It was revealed that there was a meaningful relationship at a medium level in a positive way between the students' conceptual understanding levels and attitudes regarding Force and Motion without making any discrimination at the class level.
Highlights
Setting the relationship among the teacher, student and teaching programmes on strong basis paves the way for a sufficient and effective educational system (Arslan & Özpınar, 2008)
According to the data obtained from the change of the students' scores according to the class level that they get from the test regarding Force and Motion, 9th grade students' conceptual understanding level in this subject is observed to be higher than those of other class levels regarding the minimum, maximum and mean scores they get from the test X(9th grade)=11.06
When the distribution of the sub dimensions of the attitudes towards the subject of Force and Motion is analyzed, the attitudes of the 9th grade students is found to be at medium and high level, those of the 10th grade students are at medium level and those of 11th grade students are at medium and high level
Summary
Setting the relationship among the teacher, student and teaching programmes on strong basis paves the way for a sufficient and effective educational system (Arslan & Özpınar, 2008). As a result of the rapid change in technology and the fast sprawl of the knowledge, a new arrangement has been done For this reason, in the educational programme which was revised in the year of 2012, the development of students in affective and psychomotor domains along with the instructional domain has been aimed (MEB, 2013). Maintaining the education along with the negative conditions that were mentioned before, will cause the students to retain the anxiety of learning by expressing “this course is already difficult, I cannot learn it” and so the concept learning will become more difficult (Sert Çıbık, 2011) For this reason, different teaching methods that could put the problems mentioned above on the back burner, enable the students to be active all the time by promoting them learning at the required level, and enable them to learn by exploring the knowledge through living it as well (Özeken & Yıldırım, 2011)
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