Remarks of teachers, students and parents on the elective science applications course

The purpose of this study is to understand the remarks of teachers who are conducting the Elective Science Applications (ESA) course, students who selected the course and parents. In this research, the quantitative research method and the state study pattern are applied. This research is performed on 12 teachers conducting the ESA course, 12 students taking this course and 10 parents in the Duzce city during the educational year of 2014-2015. For the analysis and interpretation of interview data, the content analysis method is applied. According to the research results, other than the decision of student and parent, compulsory decisions are made on the selection of the ESA course due to the reasons such as sole decision of parents, the decision of the school administration, the directives of teachers. It is found that before making the decision of the course, some of the parents and students have no prior knowledge about the course. According to the research findings, this course helps students on cognitive, sensual and psychomotor fields and supports the science course. As a common remarks of both teachers and parents, this course is selected by students who are interested in experiments. During the education process, besides to activities related to goals of ESA course such as experiments, it is found that unrelated applications are also applied. In this research, it is found that teachers, students and parents had some problems related to the course scope. Lack of written material related to course, such as a guide book, insufficiency of school materials, being unable to provide activity materials are major problems. In this research, positive and negative remarks of teachers, students and parents are observed. Some of the positive remarks are program's satisfactory and achievements' being on applications and imaginations. Some of the negative remarks are difficulties at finding activities related to achievements intended for program, insufficiency and inflexibility of program. In this research, some of the teachers defined themselves as insufficient on the ESA field, and explained the necessity for the in-service education. In their suggestions, in order to make course more efficient, teachers suggested providing education to teachers on the ESA course. According to the results of research findings, suggestions are listed as follows: the selection of the course needs to be considered by interests and demands, students and parents need to be informed about the content of the course, physical conditions of schools and current program need to be improved, the course needs to be enriched in terms of materials, teachers need to be trained for the required education starting at the college, the ESA course needs to be given staring at kindergartens, the ESA course needs to be evaluated by alternative measurement and evaluation methods, the instruction program of the course needs to be developed by researches on ESA course, since ESA course contains applied sciences in terms of content, the name of the course needs to be revised.