An investigation of the effect of science centers on higher order thinking skills of students in the science lesson

Science centers are becoming increasingly widespread in our country and in the world. For this reason, it is important to investigate the functions of science centers in educational activities. In the research, the effect of science centers on the secondary school students high order thinking skills was investigated. Within the scope of the research, 30 experimental group and 30 control group were selected among the 7th grade students who are studying in a secondary school in Nilufer district of Bursa in 2013. A mixed method explanatory pattern was used as a research method. Experimental and control groups were given a science high-level thinking test consisting of questions at the level of analysis and synthesis at the level of Bloom Taxonomi.With the experiment group, the achievements of "Electricity in our Life" unit were carried out with the activities experimental sets included in the Bursa Science Center, and the control group was taught by the traditional method in the classroom environment. In the qualitative part of the study, 4 students from the experimental group and 4 students from the control group who had negative attitudes towards science and whose academic achievements in science were low were studied. It has been applied with semi-structured form with open-ended questions to measure high-level thinking skills and attitudes of the 8 selected students. As a result of the research, the students who performed the activities with the experimental sets in the science center, get high succes on high order thinking skills according to studenst who were educated by the traditional method in the classroom. According to the results obtained from qualitative findings, it was determined that the students who showed a negative attitude towards the sciences had developed positively in their attitudes towards science and higher level thinking skills after participating in the studies in the science center.Taking these results into consideration, it has been suggested that science centers should be given more space in science lesson teaching, and experimental sets in science centers should be rearranged according to the scope of curriculum. Keywords: Science education, science centers, science museums, Bloom Taxonomy, higher order thinking.