Journal of Baltic Science Education

281-282

Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page

284-288

Authors: Konstantinos Ravanis

The last twenty-five years have seen an increase in the development of an area of educational research and implementation which is known internationally as Early Childhood Science Education. In fact, this is a broad framework within which different theoretical trends coexist with corresponding research orientations and fields of teaching applications. These trends converge in an effort to study the mechanisms of initiation of children aged 4-8 years into the properties of the materials and objects and into the phenomena and concepts of Natural Sciences.

300-307

Authors: Naciye Somuncu Demir, Pelin Aksüt, Dündar Yener, Fatih Aydın, Özge Subaşı, Hilal Fidan, Mehmet Aygün

The purpose of research is to examine the changes in attitudes towards astronomy following alternative astronomy education among pre-service teachers with different cognitive styles. Accordingly, it was thought to be appropriate to use pre-and post-test control group design among the experimental designs. The sample of the study included 4th year students at Abant İzzet Baysal University Department of Science Teaching during 2015-2016 spring term (N=64). In the treatment group, a process enriched with activity-based astronomy practices was followed, while the control group used a 12-week program designed as consistent with the program developed by Higher Education Council. The results seem to evidence that at undergraduate level there is an urgent need to intensify the efforts, education and practices that focus on increasing the levels of attitudes towards astronomy regardless of cognitive styles and on transferring these attitudes to skill areas and these kinds of studies need to be encouraged and extended.

324-336

Authors: Tereza Horáková, Milan Houška, Ludmila Dömeová

Modern educational methods emphasize the necessity to transfer knowledge instead of data or information within the educational process. Thus it is important to the educational texts supporting the educational process contain knowledge in a particular textual representation. But it is not trivial to decide whether the particular piece of text contain knowledge or not. The solution is to measure the similarity between the particular text structure and a typical structure of a knowledge-designed text. This research aims at analysing the classification ability of three commonly-used classification techniques: artificial neural networks (ANNs), classification and regression trees (CARTs) and decision trees (bigMLs) to separate texts or text fragments into two groups. The texts in the first group contain mainly data and information (common texts), the texts in the other group contain knowledge in one of the particular knowledge representations (knowledge texts). The sample of 120 text fragments was used for the analysis. The results show that the ANN techniques are significantly more able to make the right classification of the text than the CART or bigML ones, and evidence good classification abilities. Thus the ANN approach could broaden the set of methods used for evaluation of difficulty of educational texts or textbooks.

350-365

Authors: Nilay Şener, Erol Taş

The aim of this research is to develop a guide material prepared according to Purdue Model for the ‘The Let's Solve the Puzzle of Our Body’ unit in the 5th grade Science class at secondary school and to research the effects of this guide material on students’ creative thinking. For this purpose, the research was carried out by using the quasi experimental model, with pre-test and post-test control groups. Experimental application was carried out with 43 experimental group and 44 control group students, in total 87 students in Turkey. While in the experimental group applications were carried out based on the Purdue Model, in the control group the course was taught according to the activities stated in 2013 Ministry of National Education Science Curriculum in Turkey. The data of the research were collected using Torrance Test of Creative Thinking Verbal Form A-B and Figural Form A-B. As a result of the research, it was determined that verbal and formal creative thinking levels of the experimental group and the control group students were significantly different in favour of the experimental group students. On the basis of the results obtained from this research, some suggestions have been made to the educators and future researchers.

379-394

Authors: Nyet Moi Siew, Ruslan Mapeala

This research was conducted to evaluate the effects of Thinking Maps (TM)-aided Problem-based Learning (PBL) teaching method (TM-PBL) on motivation towards science learning among Fifth Graders. A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test non-equivalent control group design was employed to measure students’ motivation towards science learning (SMTSL) in motivational factors of self-efficacy, active learning strategies, science learning value, performance goal, achievement goal, and learning environment stimulation. The sample consisted of 270 Fifth Graders aged 11 years old. The students were randomly selected and assigned to TM-PBL (n=90), PBL (n=90), and Conventional Problem Solving (CPS) (n=90) teaching groups. The SMTSL questionnaire was administered prior to and after each intervention. A MANCOVA was conducted on the post-test measures of motivation using the students’ pre-test as the covariates. The result indicated that students taught via the TM-PBL teaching method gained significantly higher levels than their counterparts from the PBL group in Self-efficacy, Active learning strategies, Achievement Goal and Learning environment stimulation. Likewise, students taught via the TM-PBL teaching method gained significantly higher levels than their counterparts from the CPS group in all motivational factors. The findings suggest that the Thinking Maps-aided Problem-Based Learning method is effective in improving motivation towards science learning among Fifth Graders.

414-428

Authors: Hakki Kadayifci

Science lecturers usually do not pay special attention to giving students the chance to evaluate persistent unexpected experimental findings that they cannot explain with their existing theories, propose alternative hypotheses and develop new theories in inquiry tasks at schools, despite the importance of these processes in scientific discoveries. Students’ reactions to this type of findings have been a subject for conceptual change studies that new theories were presented to explain the findings. This research, in contrast, examined students’ ways of interpreting their unexpected experimental findings about the molar mass of the sulfur element while hiding a new theory, and their barriers to discovering the scientific explanation of these findings, which is new to them, in the framework of the creativity paradigm. The research was conducted with 155 first-year undergraduate students who were enrolled in a chemistry laboratory course. A majority of the participants said that the unexpected findings might have resulted from experimental errors or methodical problems. Few students stated that these findings might be valid and have a new explanation. The barriers to students' discovery of new scientific explanation for findings were classified as: lack of pre-knowledge, obstacles of existing structures, failure of creative cognitive processes and social-personal blocks.

438-441

Authors: Editorial Board

End page, JBSE, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2017