The effects of keeping science diaries on students' academic performance, the permanence of knowledge and the integration of scientific knowledge into everyday life

The aim of this study was to determine the importance of the student diaries representing a type of individual learning as a part of the science lesson. Within the framework of the research, secondary school students of the seventh grade were asked to keep science diaries in order to find out their impacts on the academic performance and the permanence of knowledge as well as to ascertain their effects on students' association of knowledge with daily life. The research was carried out in the first semester of the 2012-2013 academic year with two classes at Alirıza Altıntaş Secondary School situated in the district of Kepez, Antalya. 53 students from 7/A and 7/B participated in the study. 7/B students were formed as an experimental group and 7/A students were decided to be a control group. In this research, pretest-posttest-retest control group semi-empirical design was used. In the study, "Academic Achievement Test" used by Aydoğuş (2009) in his work, and open-ended questions, developed by the above-mentioned researcher in order to assess the level of the relation between academic achievement and daily life, were used for data collection. Academic Achievement Test was applied to both the experimental and control groups. Data collected via tests and questions were analyzed with the aid of Mann-Withney U and Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks tests. According to the data gathered, no significant differences have been found regarding the academic performance and the permanence of knowledge between the students from the experimental group where science diaries were used and the students from the control group. But as far as the association of knowledge with daily life is concerned, there have been detected positive effects. In conclusion, the study has shown the meaningful differences between the control group and the experimental group in terms of association of knowledge with daily life, as opposed to the indicator of academic performance. Key Words: Science Diaries, Science, Association with Daily Life, Academic Achievement, Permanence of Knowledge