Comparison of direct teaching method and schematic teaching method on teaching science to the students with mild mental disabilities

The overall objective of this research is to determine which the teaching plan is more effective and longer lasting prepared by direct teaching methods or schematic teaching methods on teaching science subjects (skeletal and respiratory system) to the students with mild mental disabilities.Interchangeably adaptive applications model, which is one of the single subject experimental designs, is used in the research. Research subjects are one girl and one boy, who are students in special education classroom of Şeyh Şamil Secondary School in 2015-2016 academic year. They know reading and writing, they can give short answers to the questions directed to them, they can solve a multiple choice test with four options and they can name the parts of the body and sense organs, they do not have any knowledge about skeleton and respiratory system. In order to collect the data; teacher interview form, list of skeletal and respiratory prerequisites, skeletal and respiratory systems assessment tools are used and for application reliability; the application reliability form is used. Teaching plans have been designed and implemented by the researcher to teach with direct teaching and the schematic teaching. Research data is shown in graphs and they were reviewed qualitatively. Both subjects have learned skeletal and respiratory topics at the end of the prepared teaching plans designed to teach skeletal system and respiratory system with direct and schematic teaching. Also for both subjects, it is thought that schematic and direct teaching methods did not differ significantly in terms of the effectiveness on teaching skeletal and respiratory system topics.After 15 and 25 days, it is thought schematic and direct teaching methods did not differ significantly in terms of long lasting on teaching skeletal and respiratory system topics.