Evaluating the conceptual understanding level of primary school 6th, 7th and 8th graders on the issue of force and motion by using concept cartoons, concept map, drawings and interviews

Today, the importance of science and technology, whose effect is seen in all areas in our lives in parallel with the developments experienced in science and technology, is increasing day by day. In line with the developments experienced, it is seen that the science and technology curriculum in the country has had some changes. It is aimed with these changes that individuals who can think creatively and criticically, who question and produce and who participate in the learning process actively in this way are brought up. In this respect, since 2005- 2006 academic year, the science and technology curriculum in our country has been prepared depending on a constructivist approach suggesting that students construct knowledge in their mind, use it in daily life and participate in the course actively and the curriculum has started to be implemented gradually. In the science and technology curriculum, it is seen that preliminary knowledge of the students has gained importance and thanks to the constructivist approach that enables students to create knowledge in the learning environment actively throughout the process, new methods, techniques and strategies have become prominent. Some of these methods, techniques and strategies are concept cartoons, concept map, drawings and interviews. The scanning model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, has been applied in the study conducted. The quantitative data of the study has been gathered by ?Conceptual Understanding Test? which has been composed of concept caricatures, concept maps and drawing questions. Qualitative data of the study has been gathered by the help of semi-structured meeting forms and the interviews. The primary schools of Atatürk, Durhasan, Esenyurt, Makine Kimya-H. Çamtepe, Mustafa-Zehra-Saliha Kul ve 75. Yıl which were chosen coincidently from the primary schools taking place in Demirci district of Manisa in 2011-2012 academic year second term participated into the study. 107 students from 6th grade, 110 students from 7th grade, 115 students from 8th grade and 332 students in total participated into the study. The findings obtained from the research indicated that, in the questions where concept maps were used, the students were able to fill the concepts related to force and motion substantially as truly into the blanks which were left empty in map, but they could not explain these concepts or the relationships among the concepts. In a similar way, according to the most important findings obtained from concept caricature questions, the students could mostly find the one who tells the truth scientifically from the characters taking place in caricature, but they failed to make explanation of that. The findings obtained from drawing questions of conceptual understanding test which was developed about force and motion showed that the students were at a good level in some subjects of unit such as direction and sense of force, but they failed at some issues such as road-time and speed-time graphic drawings and were at ?incomprehension? level. The findings obtained from analysis of interview questions and complete of conceptual understanding tests showed that the students were not sufficient at conceptual understanding about the unit of ?Force and Motion? and they had important conceptual delusions about the subject.