The effect of animations involving models on fourth grade gifted students' intellectual risk taking and learning in science courses

The purpose of this study is to investigate effect of animations involving role models on fourth grade gifted students' intellectual risk taking and learning in science courses. The study is a quasi-experimental study with pre and post test, and control group. For collecting data, science achievement test, intellectual risk taking observation form and diaries of student were used. The target population of the study was all Turkish fourth grade gifted students taking education in 2015-2016 term while the accessible population was all Turkish fourth grade gifted students in Malatya. In the study convenience sampling was utilized. The gifted sample of the study was composed of fourth grade gifted students enrolled in Fırat Elementary School, Science and Art Center of Malatya. All of the gifted participants (9 girls, 9 boys) were determined by IQ testing. However, non- gifted students were from fourth grade students of Karababa Elementary School (21 girls, 21 boys). Three groups of students were assigned to three groups of our study. Experimental group 1involved just gifted students, while experimental group 2 and control group involved non-gifted students. Application of the study lasted for eight weeks, two independent observers made observations for intellectual risk taking behaviours during the applications. In the first three weeks of the applications any animation was not used due to accommodation of the students about observations. In following five weeks, animations involving role models were seen by only experimental group students in first 10 minutes of the courses. During the following section of the courses the observers recorded behaviours of the students by using the form. At the end of the every course the students wrote diary to evaluate their course by giving examples. In addition science achievement test was applied as pre and post test in all the groups. For analyzing the data, ANOVA and t-test for dependent groups were used. Also frequencies of the observation were represented and content of diaries was analysed by determining examples about intellectual risk taking. According to results on the achievement test, pre-test scores of experimental group 1 differed significantly from both experimental group 2 and control group, but there was no significant difference between pre-test scores of experimental group 2 and control group. In addition, ANOVA results on post-test scores showed that there were significant differences between experimental group 1 and other groups while there was no significant difference between experimental group 2 and control group analysis of gain scores indicated that there was no difference between experimental group 1 and 2 while they had significant differences with control group. Dependent groups t test results show that pre and post-test scores of all the groups differed significantly from each other in favour of post-test scores. Graphics of frequencies regarding in-class intellectual risk taking behaviours pointed out that groups watching animations represented higher frequencies of the risk taking behaviours than their control counterpart. Also diaries showed that gifted students gave more number of examples regarding intellectual risk taking behaviour than their counterparts. The result showed that, not only the animations that including role models provided positive effect on increasing the frequency of intellectual risk taking behaviours, but also they contributed to learning of gifted and non-gifted fourth grade students.