A study of the effectiveness of concept mapping technique and gender difference on students? achievement and retention in science and technology topics and attitude toward science and technology

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of gender and concept mapping technique on the comprehension of electricity of seventh grade students, retention of their knowledge and their attitude toward science.Being an experimental study with pretest-posttest control group, this study was conducted in a Primary School in 2008-2009 Academic Year with seventh class students. Sample of the study consists of 36 students (experimental: n = 18, 8 girls and 10 boys; control: n = 18, 10 girls and 8 boys). While the lessons were taught using the traditional teaching method with control group students; in the experiment group, the lesson was taught using concept mapping technique. In both groups, the teaching was done by the researcher and the treatment took 4 hours per week for 4 weeks. The data of the research was collected using Science Foreknowledge Test (SFT), Electricity Achievement Test (EAT) and Attitude towards Science Test (ATTS). While all these three tests were applied as pretests to both groups, and while after treatment EAT was applied both as posttest and retention test; ATTS was applied as a posttest only.The hypotheses of the research (null hypotheses) related to two dependent variables (EAT and ATTS) were analyzed with SPSS 10.0 software using Independent Sample t-Test and Paired Sample t-Test. Before the analysis, the normality assumption of the t-test, which is one of the parametric hypothesis tests, was tested with Shapiro-Wilk Test. It was seen that this treatment had been almost verified for all tests (SFT, EAT, ATTS) in both treatment groups and gender groups. As it is traditionally accepted, the significance level was assigned as ? = .05. Before the treatment, SFT, AET and ATTS were applied as the pretest to the sample. Whether there is a significance difference between SFT, EAT and ATTS pretest scores of experiment and control groups, and scores of girls and boys were tested using Independent Sample t-Test. The t-test results indicated that both experimental and control groups, and both girls and boys are equivalent in terms of the mean of the three tests? pretest. Since experimental and control groups were equivalent in terms of their pretest scores, means of posttest and retention test were compared using Independent Sample t-Test. Again, since girls and boys were equivalent in terms of their pretest scores, posttest and retention test scores were compared using Independent Sample t-Test. The results of paired t-test succeeded to reject the null hypotheses that there were no significance difference between EAT posttest, ATTS posttest and EAT retention test scores of experiment and control groups. Since the means of experimental group is greater than these of the control group in all three tests, it can be stated that the treatment ? concept map-based science teaching ? is more effective. The results of Independent Sample t-Test failed to reject the null hypotheses that there was no significant difference between the EAT posttest and ATTS posttest scores of girls and boys. According to this outcome, it can be stated that gender difference has no impact on learning science and the attitude toward science. Additionally, it was tested using Paired Sample t-Test the null hypotheses that there are no significant difference between the means of EAT pretest and posttest scores, and ATTS pretest and posttest of the treatment groups, and the results of t-Test succeed to reject all four null hypotheses. According to this result; from pretest to posttest, both experimental treatments are effective in learning science and developing a positive attitude toward science.In the light of these results, it is found that the fact that science topics are presented using concept map has positive effects on student success and the attitude toward science. In addition, gender difference has no impact on learning science and the attitude toward science. As an educational inference, it is attained that science teachers and science program developers should favour concept map-based learning for a successful science education.Key Words: Concept Maps, Electricity, Elementary Education, Science Education, Traditional TeachingNumber of Pages: 198