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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 16, Issue 2, Article 6 (Dec., 2015) |
The results of this study show that students’ cognitive styles and motivational styles are main predictors of students’ conceptual understandings about electricity, and social motivated and FD students are more unsuccessful than other groups. Differentiation among conceptual understandings of students with different cognitive and motivational styles has been solely explained based on their abilities. In addition, when the roots of these variations have been explained, task’s context, format, etc. are generally ignored, which students interact with. In this view, it might be asserted that these variations among groups might originate due to traditional learning and assessment approaches that apply in learning environments in Turkey. Moreover, it might be stated that physics teachers ignore students’ individual differences. However, it is stated that learning environment should be established by taking into consideration students’ individual differences in Physics Curriculum (MONE, 2007). Although physics curriculum was established by taking into consideration students’ individual differences, teachers have still maintained their traditional teaching process by putting away curriculum’s requirements related to students’ individual differences. Unless physics teachers don’t obey requirements of physics curriculum, several variations among performances of students are retained. Physics teachers should not only differentiate their teaching approaches like collaborative learning, 5E etc. but also utilize alternative assessment techniques like portfolios in addition to paper pencil test in order to overcome these variations.
The previous studies that examined the effects of cognitive and motivational styles on students’ conceptual understandings in physics have generally focused on force and motion subjects. This study is a first attempt to examine the effects of cognitive and motivational styles on students’ conceptual understandings about electricity but this study has some limitations. We didn’t include vocational high school students since their physics curriculum are far more limited, so participants are selected in Science, Anatolian and Anatolian Teacher High Schools. Students enrolled in those schools are selected by the national exam. These students have the highest scores in Düzce according to this national exam. Thus, the results of this study are related to highly successful students.
The effects of cognitive and motivational styles on students’ understandings are examined in this study but these variables are not enough to explain the roots of variation in students’ conceptual understandings since problem solving is a superficial process. We have to examine the effects of other individual differences like metacognitive awareness, reasoning abilities on students’ conceptual understandings about electricity. Moreover, we should examine; “Does students’ understandings differentiate if we use different assessment techniques?” These studies help us with determining the best effective learning and assessment approaches.
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