Ayhan Çinici

From caterpillar to butterfly: a window for looking into students’ ideas about life cycle and life forms of insects

The purpose of this study was a qualitative analysis of high school students’ ideas about life cycle and life forms of the butterfly. For this purpose, open-ended questions and drawing methods were applied to 194 high school students from the ninth to eleventh grades and 14 to 16 years of age in Erzurum, Turkey. Students’ drawings were categorised using a five-level coding framework and the frequencies of drawn external organs (elements) were calculated; open-ended responses were also evaluated and interpreted. The results indicated that many students have a wide range of misconceptions. These misconceptions could be attributed to results of the students’ naive experiences and/or insufficient emphasis of the Turkish primary and secondary biology curriculum on the phenomenon of metamorphosis. Some students were able to identify the morphological structure of a butterfly and caterpillar, but had difficulty classifying them and describing how the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly works and what this process is. Students used different concepts to define the phenomenon of metamorphosis such as evolution, growing up, development, mutation or adaptation.

Teaching through Cooperative POE Tasks: A Path to Conceptual Change

Abstract In this article, some instructional activities that were implemented to facilitate 9th-grade students’ conceptual understanding of diffusion and osmosis are presented to guide researchers and teachers in the design and implementation of a conceptual change-based instructional strategy. In this context, the study also elaborates the component analysis of conceptual change process. Cooperative Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) tasks were applied in the conceptual change instructional strategy. The POE tasks related to the process of diffusion (examples of diffusion of solids, liquids, and gases), the diffusion process between two solutions separated with a selectively permeable membrane, some factors affecting diffusion rate (temperature and molecular weight), the osmosis process in plant tissues (potato and onion tissues), and the osmosis process between two solutions separated with a selectively permeable membrane. The results of the study suggest that POE tasks can be used to design effective conceptual change-based teaching activities in cooperative groups. This study provides insight into the design and implementation of an active learning process and gives some evidence for conceptual change.

Pre-service Teachers’ Science Teaching Self-efficacy Beliefs: The Influence of a Collaborative Peer Microteaching Program

The aim of my study was to explore the nature of changes in pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs’) self-efficacy beliefs toward science teaching through a mixed-methods approach. Thirty-six participants enrolled in a science methods course that included a collaborative peer microteaching (Cope-M). Participants’ science teaching self-efficacy beliefs were measured using paired t-test procedures on Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument-B before and after the course. Additionally, structured interviews were conducted with six PSTs. After the Cope-M process, participants continued their education in two subsequent terms, spending time observing professional teaching practices and being involved in science teaching practice in a local middle school. Finally, besides administering the self-efficacy scale again, a questionnaire regarding final perceptions of science teaching and microteaching was administered. Results suggested microteaching sessions provided a supportive and rich environment to develop cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills in terms of professional teacher behaviors. Moreover, the microteaching sessions provided a supportive medium for enhancing science teaching self-efficacy beliefs.

Balancing the pros and cons of GMOs: socio-scientific argumentation in pre-service teacher education

ABSTRACT This study investigates the role of the discursive process in the act of scientific knowledge building. Specifically, it links scientific knowledge building to risk perception of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). To this end, this study designed and implemented a three-stage argumentation programme giving pre-service teachers (PSTs) the opportunity to consider, discuss and construct shared decisions about GMOs. The study involved 101 third-year PSTs from two different classes, randomly divided into control and experimental groups. The study utilised both quantitative and qualitative methods. During the quantitative phase, researchers administered a pre- and post-intervention scale to measure both groups’ risk perception of GMOs. During the qualitative phase, data were collected from the experimental group alone through individual and group reports and an open-ended questionnaire. T-test results showed a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups’ risk perception of GMOs. Qualitative analysis also revealed differences, for example, in PSTs’ weighing of the pros and cons of scientific research demonstrating positive results of GMOs. In addition, PSTs’ acceptance of GMOs increased. Consequently, this study suggests that developing familiarity with scientific enterprise may play an effective role in adopting a scientific perspective as well as a more balanced risk perception of GMOs.

DİFÜZYON VE OSMOZ KAVRAMLARINA YÖNELİK TANI TESTİ GELİŞTİRİLMESİ VE UYGULANMASI

Bu calismada lise ogrencilerinin difuzyon ve osmoz konulariyla ilgili alternatif kavramlarinin belirlenmesine yonelik bir teshis testinin gelistirilme ve uygulanma sureci betimlenmistir. Test gelistirme sureci uc temel adimdan olusmaktadir: Bu adimlar; testteki konu alanlarinin belirlenmesi, ogrencilerin alternatif kavramlarinin belirlenmesi ve testin gelistirilmesidir. Alternatif kavramlar, literature ek olarak, acik uclu sorular iceren coktan secmeli bir test ile belirlenmistir. Testin bu ilk taslagi uc farkli liseden toplam 119 dokuzuncu sinif ogrencisine uygulanmistir. Bu uygulamadan ve literaturden elde edilen veriler, test maddelerinin ikinci asamalarinin gelistirilmesinde kullanilmistir. Boylelikle son halini alan test 9. siniftan 90 ve 10. siniftan 73 olmak uzere toplam 163 Anadolu Lisesi ogrencisine uygulanmistir. Testin guvenirlik katsayisi 0.62, ortalama zorluk indeksi 0.55 ve ortalama ayiricilik gucu 0.41 olarak hesaplanmistir. Testin uygulamasindan elde edilen sonuclara gore ise lise ogrencilerinin difuzyon ve osmoz kavramlariyla ilgili cok sayida alternatif kavramlarinin oldugu belirlenmistir.