Comparison of use direct instruction and graphic organizers in teaching of life science to students with mental retardation

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of use of direct instruction and graphic organizers in teaching Life Science studies to students with mental retardation and efficiency of the independent variables after 15 days of the intervention.Participants attended to Mamak Hurin Yavuzalp Vocational School, first and second grades in the year of 2007?2008. The group of participants consisted of 12 students who were divided into two groups by six. All participants met the study criterion in order to participate in the study. Followings are the criteria of selection: a) being literate, b) has certain reading comprehension level, and c) differentiate certain food types.The study used pretest-post-test with a control group research model. The dependent variable was determined as the achievement scores of the participants. The independent variables of the study were determined as direct instruction and graphic organizers. While the test group was taught by using graphic organizers, control group was taught by using direct instruction.A test about food items which was prepared by the researcher was applied to the both groups in two sessions in the same day. After one day of introducing the independent variables to both groups, a post-test was given to control and test groups. After 15 days of giving the post-test, the same test was given to both groups as a follow-up application.In the analysis of the data, an SPSS program was used instead of using parametric statistics. Nonparametric statistics were preferred due to limited number of participating students. Mann Whitney U test and Wilcox on the analyses of data were completed. Mean, media, mode, and standard deviations were also calculated.Present study findings showed that there were no significant differences on the post test results of treatment and control groups in knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, and synthesis steps of cognitive taxonomy in instructional delivery of Life Sciences. However, there was a significant difference between pre and post test results of both groups, indicating that instructional delivery of Graphic Organizers was more effective than Direct Instruction. In addition, maintenance results after 15 days of the treatment showed that the Graphic Organizers continued to me more effective than the Direct Instruction.