The effect of Lego programme based science and technology education on the students academic achievement, science process skills and their attitudes toward Science and Technology course for pyhsical facts learning field

The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of using Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 for science technology education on the students? academic achievement, science process skills, and attitudes toward the science and technology course phsical in the primary science and technology curriculum. For this purpose, the topics related to physics were developed and implemented by the means of Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0. The three stage model was used as a teaching strategy.In the methodology, pre-post test semi-experimental research design was used. The sample consists of 52-6th grade students from a state school in Izmir. The study was implemented during 5 weeks. Half of the students have been selected for a control group and the other half of the students were selected for experimental groups. As the students in the experimental group were taught by the support of Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, the students in control group were taught by the standards defined in the curriculum issued in 2005. In order to determine the level of the science achievement of students in before and after the intervention, an academic achievement test was developed. The attitudes toward the science and technology course scale was employed in order to identify changes in students? attitudes. As the third instrument, the science process skill test was employed to measure any changes in pre and post test scores. In addition to the quantitative data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the students in experimental group in order to clarify their learning level of the topics, and their opinions about the course. According to the findings obtained from the study, the students in the experimental group developed positive attitudes toward the science and technology course, increased their academic achievement, and finally developed their science process skills. The final remark of this master thesis, is that the enhanced learning environment with robotics dramatically increases the students? motivation toward the science and technology course. For this reason, further studies on the integration of robotics technologies into science and technology curriculum should be conducted in order to create more effective learning environments for the future geraration. Key Words: Lego Mindstroms NXT 2.0, Science and Technology Teaching, Robotics, Inquiry Based Teaching, Three Stage Model.