The effect of general clothing technology course program being prepared according to techniques developing reflective thinking on academic achievement and attitude

This study was carried out to determine the effect of General Clothing Technology Course Program having been prepared according to techniques developing reflective thinking on academic achievement and attitude of students at Vocational School at Textile Technology Program. The research was a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental study. The working group of the research was 42 1st grade students at Düzce University Duzce Vocational School Textile Technology Program at 2013-2014 Academic Year. Textile Technology Program 1st year students were divided into two equal groups; control (N= 21) and experimental (N= 21). Reflective thinking based teaching was administered to the experimental group and traditional teaching methods were administrated to the control group of General Clothing Technology Courses for 14 weeks. Personal Information Form was applied at the beginning of the study. Before and after the experimental procedure of the General Clothing Technology Courses, Academic Achievement Test and General Clothing Technology Attitude Scale developed by researcher were used. The Interview Form being developed to get the opinions about General Clothing Technology Course Program was applied to 10 students selected through random sampling method from experimental group. In the research, quantitative data gained from the data collection tools in order to determine academic achievement and attitude of students of learning environment developed by reflective thinking techniques and qualitative data obtained by the interviews carried out with students at the end of the reseach were used. Clothing Technology Course Attitude Scale being developed by the researcher was examined in three dimensions aimed at the activities, the importance of the course and the attractiveness of the course. Two-factor ANOVA for repeated measures on one factor associated (dependent) groups and unrelated (independent) samples t-test were used in SPSS 18.00 istatistical software package program for quantitative data. The qualitative data obtained from the study was analyzed by descriptive analysis approach. At the end of the study, that there was a meaningful difference in favor of the experimental group in the posttest attitude scores towards the activities performed in General Clothing Technology Course was determined (t(40)= 2.753; p<.05). The posttest attitude scores of experimental group students towards the activities performed in General Clothing Technology Course were higher than ( = 48.90) that of the control group ( = 43.48). That there was a meaningful difference in favor of the experimental group in the posttest attitude scores towards the importance of the course in General Clothing Technology Course was determined (t(40)= 3.428; p<.05). After experimental study, attitudes of experimental group students towards the importance of General Clothing Technology Course ( =31.29) was higher than that of the control group ( = 26.86). That there was a meaningful difference in favor of the experimental group in the posttest attitude scores towards the attractivesness of the course was determined (t(40)= 5.255; p<.05). These findings show that General Clothing Technology Course taught with techniques that developed reflective thinking increased the attitudes of students in a positive way towards the course. The attitudes of experimental group students to whom techniques that developed reflective thinking were used were found to be more positive than that of control group students. Academic success scores of students in the experimental group (EU) did not differ significantly from the scores of students in the control group (t(40)= 0.256; p>.05). Although there was not a meaningful difference in posttest average scores of experimental group students and control group students, there was a 3.90-point-increase in favor of the experimental group. Academic achievement of experimental group students to whom techniques that developed reflective thinking were administrated showed a slight increase compared to the control group to whom traditional teaching methods were administrated. Reflective thinking approach, in increasing the success of the students, was more effective than the proposed training program. Besides applying techniques that develop reflective thinking in knowledge and understanding levels, applying them to the courses requiring higher-level thinking can provide more effective results. Keywords: Reflective thinking, textile education, academic achievement and attitude