Inquire learning effects to elementary school students’ nanotechnology instructions

Nanometer is a popular term in the 21 century, it is relates to our daily life (Pan, 2004), nanometer phenomenon existed in natural world for a long time, the technology can be applied in many different levels and products are continuously renovating, for example, biotech, environmental industry, electrical parts, national defense, auto and aerospace all have a great development potential. Scientists predicted the microcosmic world will have a most shocking evolution. Recently in US, Japan, Europe, Korea and even China have invested large founds in the national nanometer material developments (Lee & Tang, 2006). Taiwanese government invested “National Nanotechnology Program (NNP)” since 2002, and developed many “nanotechnology materials”, but the common knowledge of nanometer technology is still in a fundamental stage. The nanotechnology phenomenon can be applied in production, development, and usage of such technology is limited (Lu & Sung, 2010).

Applying nanometer concepts in teaching plan; school is the best place to strengthen citizens to understand nanotechnology knowledge through curriculum. Therefore, we must apply a series of education plans to improve learning effects, for example, analyze teaching objectives, learners’ characteristics, in order to design teaching materials, methods, practice and then evaluate final outcome (Pan, 2004).

Teaching model is essential to the effect of strategies-based instructional education (Dansereau, 1995; Fang, & Guo, 2000). The expositive-teaching is a teaching method can display a meaningful learning. Teachers organize the teaching materials and by using a systematic verbal methods to teach students. Students will combine new and prior knowledge, which further reorganize into their own cognition structure (Ausubel, 1968). In contrast, in experiential-teaching, students learn from experiencing real, simulated or dramatized situations. Through the teaching process, students are immersed in practical experiences that model real-world issues. So the Students can analyze and process their experiences, form ideas or theories about issues, ideas and/or problems, make generalizations, reflect on their learning and future applications (State schooling, 2012). Experimental activities encourage affect reasoning, critical thinking, understand of science and also help students to develop the ways of producing knowledge (Akdeniz, Cepni & Azar, 1998).

The nature phenomena of nanometer are appeared in our daily life for a long time, but it is hard to observe by eyes, also nanotechnology concepts are seldom applied in the elementary school curriculum in Taiwan. This study applied experimental design with “learning by doing” and “meaningful learning” theories. We apply sensual organs generated experience to connect with experiential-teaching theory. In contrast, we applied expositive-teaching methods in order to allow student’s prior concepts to connect with new concepts, further produced transfer learning. Finally, the study inquired the learning effect between experiential-teaching and expositive-teaching, in order to facilitate nanotechnology concept course design in the future.