Use of visual culture tools in developing engineering and design skills in primary school science class

The purpose of this research is to reveal the reflections of engineering and design practices carried out with visual culture tools in primary school 4th grade science course on the development of students' critical thinking, creative thinking and engineering and design skills. The participants of the study, which was designed according to the action research methodology, were determined by using criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods. Thus, the study was carried out with six fourth-grade primary school students who had problems with the concepts and processes of engineering and design. A total of four action cycles were carried out to improve students' skills through engineering design activities based on the visual culture tool. Critical thinking scale, creative thinking evaluation rubric, engineering design process rubric, engineering design activity document, engineering design process interview form, engineering design application interview form, researcher diary, student diaries, observation, interview, student products and validity committee interviews were used as data collection tools in study. The quantitative data of the study were analyzed with Wilcoxon signed rank test for paired samples, and the Kendall W-Test which is used to determine inter-coder agreement. Content analysis was used in the analysis of qualitative data. According to the findings, it was concluded that the students developed their critical thinking, creative thinking, engineering and design skills.