The effects of 5e model on the scientific process skills, academic achievement and attitude towards the geography course

The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of 5E model on students? science process skills, academic achievement and their attitudes to Geography course during teaching of the subject ?Climate? in Natural Systems.In this study, the experimental design method was used. To assess the students? scientific process skills and the development in their acedemic achievement, ? Science Process Skills Test? and ?Academic Achivement Test? developed by the researcher was used and to assess students? attitudes towards geography course ?Geography Course Attitude Scale? a likert type scale developed by Coşkun (2004 ) and referred to Demirkaya (2003) was used. The data collected from the questionnaire items were analyzed using frequencies, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation and t-test for independent groups, paried variables t-test, one way Anova and Two-Way Anova ( repeated measures) were used.The study has been carried out on experimental group and two control groups of Grade 9 students at Kırşehir Mehmet Akif Ersoy High School in 2006-2007 educational year. The course has been taught using 5E model based on constructivist approach in treatment group by the researcher, in control-1 group, the course has been taught using traditional teaching methods by the researcher and in control-2 group the course has been taught using current geography cirruculum by the geography course teacher. The participants of the study were 38 girls and 38 boys, totally 76 students.The results revealed that there was a significant difference between science process skills, academic achievement and attitudes of the experimental group students towards Geography course taught by the researcher using 5E model and the control-1 group taught by the researcher using traditional teaching methods and control-2 group taught by the course teacher using the current Geography course cirriculum.While there was a significant difference between the science process skills, academic achivement and attitudes of the male students and female students by gender in the favour of male students, there was no significant difference in their academic achievement.There was no significant difference in the science process skills, academic achievement and attitudes of the students towards Geography course among control-1 group and control-2 group by gender. According to the results of the study ,E5 Model is recommended to use in geography teaching.Science Code:Key Words: Geography Teaching, 5E Model, Learning Cycle, Traditional Geography Teaching, Science Process Skills, Academic Achievement, Geography Course Attitute ScaleNumber of Pages: 225Supervised by Prof. Dr. Hayriye SAYHAN