Examination of 6th grade students' learning strategies and science learning skills for the science course

The aim of this research is to examine the learning strategies and science learning skills of 6th grade secondary school students studying in a public school in the Iskenderun district of Hatay province with a pre-test post-test experimental design. The research was carried out with 6th grade students in the 2021-2022 academic year. Research data were collected using several instruments including "Personal Information Form", "Learning Strategies Scale", "Science Learning Skills Scale", and "Worksheets". The data were analyzed using the SPSS package program. In the analysis and interpretation stages of the data, frequency (f), percentage (%), arithmetic mean (x ̅), and standard deviation (Sd) were calculated and t-test for binary variables and One-Way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was performed for more than two variables. When the difference between the groups was significant, the effect size values were checked. The Cohen effect size was used to calculate the size of the difference between the groups. Before the analysis of the data, the normality values of the collected data were examined. Normal distribution was determined with the values of skewness and kurtosis (1), mode, median, and arithmetic mean (2) and Kolmogrov-Smirnov tests (3). Levene's test was used to test the homogeneity of variances in the single-factor ANCOVA analysis. As a result of the research, when the overall and factors of the "Learning Strategies" scale are examined, it was seen that there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group students, as well as a statistically significant difference in favor of the post-test scores. There was no statistically significant difference between test scores. For the overall "Science Learning Skills" scale, when the pre-test post-test scores of the experimental group students were compared, it was seen that the arithmetic mean increased in favor of the post-test scores and there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results of the control group students. It was seen that there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results of the control group students for "Science Learning Skills" scale. The results implied that giving more place to learning strategies and science learning skills in science lessons may affect students positively.