The effect of learning cycle on the pre-service students of science education in the physics laboratory

ABSTRACT The curiosity of the children towards the science requires an effective education method for science topics. The method should facilitate learning of scientific knowledge and assist the children to extend the knowledge by applying it in the daily life. Moreover it should prepare and organize the knowledge in the mind in a persistent form. "Learning Cycle" is an education model that is based on the knowledge organization process of the mind. It helps students to apply the concepts and to make their scientific knowledge persistent. Applying the model in the science lectures, especially in the laboratory courses, will be useful for the students. The goal of this study is to compare "Learning Cycle Model" with the "Traditional" Teaching Method. What is the effect of these methods on the attitude of the teacher candidates towards the physics laboratory? Which method is more successful? The Learning Cycle Model and the Traditional Teaching Method is applied in the laboratory courses of "electricity and magnetism" topics in the first year basic physics course of the university. To compare the both models, a group of 34 was selected as control group. The control group was taught with the traditional teaching method. The experimentation group had 35 members. Their laboratory courses were done according to the learning cycle model. The study is done in 2003-2004 semester with the first year students of the Gazi University Kirsehir Education Faculty Primary School Education Department Science Education Program. In order to assess the subproblems of the study, three assessment tools are used: First tool is physics laboratory attitude scale. The tool is used in order to test whether the attitude of the candidate teachers is related to the teaching method. The second tool is the scientific success test (SST) that includes electricity and magnetism subjects. The tool is used to compare the success degrees of the candidateteachers in the control and experiment groups. The third tool is a questionaire on the evaluation of the effectiveness of the teaching method. It is used to learn the subjective ideas of the candidate teachers about the applied teaching method. The data obtained through these evaluation tools are analyzed by using SPSS. The statistical models used to analyze the data are descriptive statistics, dependent and independent t-tests and Pearson correlation analysis. The statistical analysis shows that the attitude towards the physics laboratory of the candidate teachers has not a meaningful difference between control and experiment groups with regard to the teaching method. But the scientific success test shows a difference between the teaching methods. Before beginning the semester, the control group had a higher success rate than the experiment group. At the end of the semester, the experiment group had a higher success rate. Moreover there is a positive, medium level of relation between the success rate and attitude towards the physics laboratory in the experiment group. But the relation in the control group is in a much lower degree. Apart öf the quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis that is done at the end of the teaching semester supports these facts. Thus the results of this study shows that learning cycle model is an education approach that helps to resolve the main problems in teaching the scientific knowledge. It facilitates- the students to effectively learn and organize the knowledge in a meaningful way. It achieves to make the knowledge long lasting. The students become more capable to apply the knowledge in other areas outside the original context. VI