The effect of the concept cartoons used in the teaching of simple machines unit on the achievement and conceptual comprehension levels of 8th grade students

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of using concept cartoons on students' academic achievement and conceptual comprehension levels in the teaching of "Simple Machines" unit in the 8th grade science curriculum of primary education. The study group of the research consists of 81 students studying at the 8th grade level of a secondary school located in Şahinbey District of Gaziantep Province in the 2019-2020 acedemic year. In the study, semi-experimental pattern with pretest-posttest control group was used. Two classes at the 8 th grade level were appointed randomly, one as the control group and the other as the experimental group. In the experimental group of the research, constructivist education supported by concept cartoons was applied and in the control group only constructivist education was used. In the research, "Simple Machines Unit Achievement Test" and "Simple Machines Conceptual Understanding Test" were used as data collection tools. Since the scores of the experimental and control groups from the pretest and posttests are suitable for normal distribution, t-test was used. According to the results of the analysis, a statistically significant difference was found between the posttest success scores of the experimental and control groups. Among the conceptual comprehension posttest scores it was deternimined that there is a statistically significant difference. According to these findings, it was concluded that the experiment group that is used constructivist education supported with conceptual cartoons are more successful in terms of academic achievement and conceptual understanding than those control group students that were only used constructivist education. Finally, there was no significant difference in gender in students' level of success and conceptual understanding.