The effects of alternative energy sources education programme on the primary school seventh grade students' problem solving abilities and success levels

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of alternative energy sources about the ability of problem solving and 7th class students? level of success of the students at primary school. This study has been conducted with the total of 24 students in two classes equal to each other in the first term of 2009-2010 academic year in ITU?s Development Foundation Private Primary School of Natuk Birkan. These groups are formed according to their teachers? views and the students? grades, taken from the examinations at the end of the first unit for science education course. These classes are divided into two groups: Control and experimental group. While students in experimental group learn Science Education Course with the problem solving ability, control group learns this lesson with traditional methods. Problem solving ability and the student achievement test are applied to the students during their study. Scales are applied to the students before the practice as a pre test and after the practice as a post test. After six weeks the achievement test has been applied to the students as retention test. For analyzing the data, Mann Whitney U tests and Related Groups Wilcoxon tests are used. At the end of the study the following are obtained:1.The level of students? success, according to the results of the problem solving experiment group and traditional control group?s pre and pro-test, any significant difference with contrast to each other is not found.2.The ability of problem solving, according to the results of the problem solving experiment group and traditional control group?s pre and pro-test, any significant difference with contrast to each other is not found.3.According to result of retention test, between problem solving ability approach experimental group and the traditional control group a considerable difference in favor of the experimental group is found.4.According to result of retention test, between problem solving ability experimental group and traditional control group a considerable difference in favor of experimental group has been found.