Attitudes of students to science lessons teached in the school garden and the impacts of these lessons to their academic success, motivation of learning science

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of outdoor learning environment in science courses, on students' academic achievement, motivation for science learning and attitudes towards science course. This study makes contribution to literature in terms of that it is intended only as out-of-class learning in the school garden independently, not a complementary learning way. A quasi-experimental research design with pretest - posttest control and experimental group from quantitative research was used in this study. A total of 32 8th grade students (16 experimental and 16 control groups) constituted the study group. Activities for Pressure subject were designed according to curriculum, and they were applied to control group in the class and applied to experimental group in the school garden. The activities were put into practice for 10 course hours. Pressure Achievement Test, Motivation Scale for Science Learning and Attitude Scale Towards Science were used for data obtaining. Data collected after pre-test and post-test were analysed with SPSS program. Before and after application Shapiro-Wilk test were used to test normality. Independent samples t-test was used to determine whether outside classroom learning in the school garden has an effect on achievement, motivation and attitude. The data obtained show that there was not a statistically significant difference on students' academic achievement and attitude for learning science, but on students' motivation for science learning. As a result, it is advised if out-of-class activities in the school garden are applied for a long time, they can be more successful. Moreover, the school garden should be used more often for the out-of-class learning.