Effect of active teaching methods based on constructivist theory on students' science achievement and attitude about flowing electricity unit

This study was designed to improve the academic success and attitude of the 6thgrade students of a primary school; in ?Flowing Electricity? subject of the ?Electricity Guiding ourLife? unit by considering constructivist way of teaching.In this research;1. The success in science and the attitude towards the science of students werecompared in relation with structural teaching approach and traditional teachingapproach.2. The affects of sexuality of the students to the academic success and attitude wereanalyzedThe sample of this study, determined by using purposeful sampling method, wascomposed of the students from 6-A and 6-B classeses out of 6th grade at Manisa TarzanıAhmet Bedevi Primary school in Manisa city center. There were 34 students from 6-A and 34students from 6-B in total 68 students. The 34 students selected randomly from 6-A were thecontrol group and 6-B `s students were the experiment group.?Flowing Electricity? subject of the ?Electricity Guiding our Life? unit was considered inthe study. In this subject, students have difficulties to understand many concepts. There fore,during the lessons, collaborative teaching methods and active learning method and techniqueswere used. The lessons were planned in the light of doing experiments and disscussing theresults of those experiments.Before and after the research, a knowledge-success test in relation to the subject of?Flowing Electricity? subject of the ?Electricity Guiding our Life? unit was applied both to theexperiment group and control group as first and last test. n addition, the attitude scale made byAkınoğlu (2001) was applied as the first and last test to measure the change in the attitudes ofstudents, too.The results according to the data of that research are shown below:There is a meaningful difference between constructivist teaching approach and-traditional teaching approach in favor of constructivist teaching approach whenstudents? academic success and their attitude towards science and science lectures areobserved.There is a slight difference in favor of constructivist teaching approach as students?-academic success and their attitudes and their sexuality are observed.With the results occurred, there some proposals were developed. It is believed that thisresearch will contribute to the other researches made before and it will light to the way forfurther researches.KEY WORDS: Active Learning, Electricity, Science Education, Traditional TeachingMethod, Learning, Attitude, Constructivist Teaching