The effect of conceptual change approach on teaching the subject of electricity to sixth grade students in primary education science and technology course

In this research, the effectiveness of the education model of teaching the subject of electricity to sixth grade students in primary school, which is supported with the conceptual changing approach, on the success and behavior of the student is examined. The sample set for this research is composed of two sixth grade classes in Nazilli Beşeylül Primary School. One of these classes is selected as the test group (24 students) while the other is the control group (29 students). The dependent variables of this work are the points of the academic success test and the points of attitude towards science.In this research, the concept success test and applied sciences attitude criterion which are developed by the researcher are used as data collecting methods. Data collected from these tools are analyzed using the SPSS statistics software. While the data is evaluated, test group and control group students' conceptual success and attitudes are examined according to the teaching method. The sum of the participants' right answers or points are taken as data for hypothesis tests. Then, these values are studied in order to find out if they are normally distributed according to the groups, and it is discovered that they are not normally distributed. Therefore, nonparametric tests are used instead of parametric tests in the succeeding analysis. When comparing test and control groups and gender groups Mann-Whitney test is used. Also for intra group pretesting and post testing comparison Wilcoxon test is used. Since nonparametric tests are used, the median, minimum and maximum values are given in result tables in spite of arithmetical mean and standard deviation.The results of the analysis of research data can be briefly summarized as:1. In terms of academic success and with regard to the attitude test, the pretesting and post testing results show no significant statistical difference between the test and control groups (P>0.05). Consequently, it can be inferred that the conceptual change approach in teaching the subject of electricity is not effective on the student's success.2. Success pretests and post tests reveal that there is no significant difference between girls and boys (P>0.05). Consequently, the effectiveness of the methods does not change according to gender3.. The attitude tests show a statistically significant difference between genders both in pretests (P<0,01) and post tests (P<0,05). Girls are observed to have more tendency to science when compared to boys in attitude tests.Keywords: Teaching of Applied Sciences, Concept Teaching, Configurative (Costructivist) Approach, Conceptual Change Approach, Conceptual Change Texts, Concept Maps, and Analogies