The effect of the science stories? supported with concept cartoons on the students? academic achievemet, attitudes and motivations

We live in an age of information and technology is constantly changing and evolving within a structure. To adapt to the changes and developments of this nature, can bring solutions to the problems encountered in daily life, curious, skeptical, questioning, analyzing and participating in educating individuals; science and technology course has a great importance. Thus, science and technology courses for students to gain these features are thought to increase the interest in the use of different methods and techniques. Concept cartoons and science stories can be given as an example for the methods and techniques which are thought to provide an increase in students? academic achievements associating with their experience and issues learned from their lives, knowledge as well as skills that can save them provides active participation of them in science classes. Concept cartoons we met in 1990s are a method that contributes to development of the cognitive and affective aspects of the students in their courses with both visually as well as thought-provoking aspect of it. Science stories we encounter in our lives most of the time in the area subject to the problems of daily life, especially it is one of the methods that contributes to development of the students? imagination. Today, despite a lot of research done on the concept cartoons, it is not same for the science stories. Therefore, it is considered that there is an important contribution to the literature with looking it up on the common effect of the use of a combination of such as the common feature of many science stories and concept cartoons which ensure the active participation of the course, subject to associate with daily life, be used for argumentation. The study in this context; it is aimed to determine the effects on the motivations and attitudes, academic achievements of the students by using science stories which are supported with concept cartoons that primary education science and technology lesson ?Human and Environment? unit. The study was carried out in Ziya Gökalp Nurettin Kelem Primary School that exists in Demirci which is the town of Manisa in the second period academic study of 2012-2013. Practices were carried out with 27 students (7-B) who were experimental group and 27 students (7-A) who were control group that totally 54 students in this school. While ?Human and Environment? unit was performed with the curriculum which consist scientific stories that supported with concept cartoons for the experimental group students, it was performed with the existing curriculum for the control group students. The study was carried out a total of 24 class periods that include 4 class periods for pretest applications, 16 lesson periods for prepared activities applications and 4 class periods for posttest applications. In this research, quasi-experimental research design was used with pretest-posttest control group. ?Academic Achievement Test? which is prepared for ?Human and Environment? unit exists in primary school 7. Class science and technology lesson, ?Science Attitude Scale? and ?Motivation towards Science Learning Scale? were carried out to all groups as pretest and posttest. Besides, ?Personal Information Form? was used to determine equivalence of the students who take part in groups. Package SPSS 20 software was used to analyze the data obtained from the study. t-test and analysis of variance were used in making the sub-analysis of the research for the solution of problems. According to the results; it is concluded that the academic achievements of the experimental group students to whom sciece stories supported with concept cartoons were used are significantly higher than the academic achievements of the control group students to whom content of the science and technology curriculum were used (p<.05). It is understood that there is no significant difference between attitudes of the experimental and control group students towards science and the motivations of the students for science. Based on the results of this research; science stories and concept cartoons which were used in this application can be helpful for the teachers who work for The Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and for the students for science and technology lesson. In addition, it is hoped that the study will lead to the researchers. Besides, scientific concept cartoons and stories can be suggested to be included in the curriculum of science and technology.