A study on evaluation of the biology projects submitted to the TUBITAK secondary education research projects contest from the Bursa Region

The following recommendations should be taken into consideration by the relevant authorities in order to increase the participation of high schools in Biology projects, to generalize the research culture, to eliminate the differences of participation between schools, to accommodate participation ratio to schooling rate, to raise the scientific and technological level of projects, and to make schools, teachers, students, and parents to be more interested in this matter:

Cooperation should be ensured between administration, teachers, students, and parents to provide participation in project competitions in accordance with the numbers of public schools,
The local reasons for low level of participation from public schools should be determined, and necessary measures should be taken,
Teachers and students should be provided with foreknowledge concerning project planning, content, method, and report writing,
The main problems projects should be selected from daily life; necessary time should be given to teachers serving as project managers; these teachers should be financially supported by school administrations,
Tool and equipment support should be provided to the students who prepare projects by school administrators, teachers, families, and other organizations,
The people or institutions that conduct, exhibit, organize, and publish scientific activities at high school level should be introduced to participants,
Encouraging students to do research or conduct a project should be turned into a consistent educational policy at public high schools,
The exaggerated desire to guide and manage at private schools should not turn into an instrument of pressure, fear, intimidation, or tedium in the course of time,
The fulfillment or non-fulfillment of particular rules or the degree to which such rules are fulfilled during project management should be determined through a project evaluation chart,
Ateliers, laboratories, libraries, and internet should be kept available for students to access when they want or need while designing or implementing a project,
Project subjects should be realistic and based on scientific data bases; scientific reality and imaginariness should not be confused; imaginariness and other similar approaches should be kept out of attention by both guiding counselors and students,
A particular attention should be paid to the preparation of management and work flow plan for projects that are practical and will end up with an output through experimental activities,
It should be taken into consideration that the evaluation criteria are not different from the criteria featured in the implementation of scientific research methods,
Experts, consultants or teachers chosen for evaluating projects should be informed that they must be objective, obey confidentiality principle, perform an evaluation or ranking in accordance with the sub-titles included in the chart, and ensure a careful and meticulous evaluation. If necessary, these experts, consultants, or teachers should be supported via an in-service training,
Project proposals should come from students in consideration of the fact that a process managed through instructions alone cannot make the expected contribution to the improvement of cognitive and affective skills of students,
The development of critical thinking, discussing, and questioning skills of students should not be suppressed in competition projects.