Improving Science Attitude and Creative Thinking through Science Education Project: A Design, Implementation and Assessment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a science education project implemented in different learning environments on secondary school students’ creative thinking skills and their attitudes to science lesson. Within this scope, a total of 50 students who participated in the nature education project in Samsun City in 2014 make up the sample of the study. For this purpose, within the scope of a five-day long project, the students were presented with hands on activities, laboratory practices, outdoor practices, creative drama, planetarium and observatory activities to enable them to view science and nature from different views. The study was designed as one group, pre-test post-test experimental research. Attitudes scale towards Science lesson and Torrance Creative Thinking Test Verbal A-B forms were used as pre-test and post-test. In addition, open-ended interview form was used in order to find out the students’ views on the project. For the analysis of quantitative data, non-parametric tests Wilcoxon signed ranks test and Mann Whitney-U test were used while a parametric test, t-test for dependent and independent samples was used for creative thinking test scores. For qualitative data analysis, content analysis method was used. The results of the study showed that the project was effective in increasing the students’ attitudes towards the subject of science and their levels of creative thinking; at the same time it was found that using different learning environments attracted the students’ interests on learning science and affected them positively towards science.