We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
BİYOLOJİ ÖĞRETMEN ADAYLARININ "BAKTERİ" KONUSUNDAKİ BİLİŞSEL YAPILARININ VE ALTERNATİF KAVRAMLARININ BELİRLENMESİ.
- Authors
KURT, Hakan; EKİCİ, Gülay
- Abstract
To understand how students transfer knowledge to their minds and how they structure this knowledge is one of the most important issues that researchers are interested in. Constructive learning approach indicates that individuals construct knowledge actively through associating this knowledge with pre-existing knowledge and previous experiences (Anderson 1992; Bodner 1986; Mills, Shaw, Van Horne, Zhang and Boughman, 2008). According to this approach, due to the associations with previous experiences, the existing cognitive structures in mind affect individuals' perceptions of new events and the new cognitive structures that they will construct. It is, then, possible that a weak cognitive structure will affect the process of constructing new knowledge in mind adversely, and thus, leading to failure to construct new knowledge meaningfully (Tsai and Huang 2002; Vosniadou, Ioannides, Dimitrakopoulou and Papademetriou, 2001). In this respect, rather than merely dealing with what knowledge students have, researchers have headed towards several techniques (Vance, Miller and Hand, 1995). Bahar (2003) provides these strategies as follows: word association, structured grid, diagnostic tree, concept maps, texts of conceptual change, analogy, and predict-observe-explain. Of the techniques that investigate students' cognitive structure, word association techniques is the most commonly used and oldest one, which was used as a data collection instrument in this study (Bahar, Johnstone and Sutcliffe, 1999; Hovardas and Korfiatis, 2006; Özatlı and Bahar, 2010; White and Gunstone, 2000). The aim of the current study is to determine biology student teachers' cognitive structure on the concept of bacteria. However, to the best knowledge of the author, there is not any study in the literature that uses the free word association test and the drawing technique to investigate biology student teachers' cognitive structure on the concept of bacteria. Qualitative research method was applied in this study (Yıldırım and Şimşek, 2006). The data were collected from 44 biology student teachers. The free word-association test and the drawing technique were used as data collection instruments. The internal validity of the themes and subthemes categories was ensured by the authors and two experts in biology education. The average reliability between the coders was calculated as 90%. The data collected were subject to content analysis. Analyzing the biology student teachers' responses to the concept of bacteria on the free word association test, these responses were coded and divided into categories. Based on the categories, frequencies were provided. The data of the free word association test have been analyzed with the Nvivo-9 programme for preparing Model. As a result of the analysis of the data collected through the free word-association test and the words provided by biology student teachers, 8 categories were determined, namely, "bacteria identification", "structure and properties of bacteria", "bacterial genetics", "classification of bacteria", "bacteria-containing environments", "bacteria review fields and tools", "bacteria-immunity" and "the formation of the nutrients and energy in bacteria". Although the biology student teachers had a valid categorical cognitive structure considering the structural properties of the bacteria and the definition and properties of the bacteria, the association of these categories with other categories was not found to be enough. In the first category, the related answers provided by biology student teachers in response to the concept of bacteria mostly fall into the category of "bacteria identification" and appeared as the dominant category. On the other hand, It is determined that the data collected through drawing technique to investigate biology student teachers' cognitive structures related to the concept of bacteria fall into 5 categories in total. These can be listed as follows: "structure and properties of bacteria", "bacteria identification", "bacterial genetics", "classification of bacteria" and "the formation of the nutrients and energy in bacteria". Moreover, the data collected through two data collection instruments indicated that student teachers had misconceptions about bacteria considering the themes determined. Since this concept concerns many disciplines, it causes students to have difficulty in forming conceptual structures related to the concept of bacteria. Teachers play an important role in students' learning concepts. Teachers of biology, which is related to many disciplines, adopt great responsibility for students' forming and learning the appropriate conceptual structures related to the concept of bacteria. The reasons why students are successful or unsuccessful in learning concepts are the leading issue in educational research for an effective learning. In brief, attaching importance to concept teaching and learning at any stage of education and organizing learning-teaching activities accordingly are of high importance to meaningful learning. Therefore, it is necessary to determine students' conceptual structures, inaccurate and incomplete information, and concepts before starting to teach. Teaching and learning should be planned through suitable strategies, methods, and techniques. Thus, students can code meaningfully new concepts and information in their minds, and create accurate correlation between these concepts and information, which leads to more meaningful and permanent learning.
- Publication
Electronic Turkish Studies, 2013, Vol 8, Issue 8, p885
- ISSN
1308-2140
- Publication type
Academic Journal