Science and technology course teaching activities; an investigation of the level of adoption and application based on teacher perceptions

Beginning 2005-2006 school year, the Ministry of National Education has integrated constructivist learning theory in science and technology curriculum across all elementary grades. This integration is planned to be implemented in middle and secondary education curriculums in the following years. At this point, it is necessary to examine the effectiveness of the new curriculum in terms of its adoption and application in the classrooms.This research intends to investigate the challenges that teachers face and their classroom practices of the new science and technology curriculum. Survey research method was used for this study. 455 teachers from 70 elementary schools across 14 cities around the country participated in the study as to represent the population of science and technology teachers in Turkey. For this purpose; ?Science and Technology Classroom Activities and Challenges? survey was administered to gather the data. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (SPSS) version 10.0. Teachers? occupational and demographic data were analyzed and percentage?frequency results were reported. In order to determine the difference between groups regarding teacher perceptions of the new curriculum, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were utilized. Where significant differences were observed between groups in ANOVA, Tukey test has been used to determine the nature of the differences. The statistical significance level was set to be 0.05 ( ??????? .The findings of this study revealed that:?There was no significant difference between groups in terms of adoption of the new science and technology curriculum considering educational level, age, completed degree/program of teachers, classroom size and SES of their students. On the other hand, application of the new science and technology curriculum significantly differed among groups.?Considering seniority and gender there was significant difference among groups for both adoption and application of the new science and technology curriculum.