The effect of an instructional intervention on enhancement pre-service science teachers’ science processes skills

Developing essential knowledge and skills, and understanding of science is a fundamental aim of science education. To this end, reform efforts have been expanded worldwide to increase the quality of education. The wave of science education reform has affected Turkey as many countries as well. The Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) has developed new science curriculum for middle schools as a part of a larger scale educational reform (MoNE, 2005). Then, the curriculum also has been revised in 2013. Scientific inquiry has an important focus in science education (NRC, 2000, 2012). New demands based on the revised science curriculum require science teachers should have adequate science content knowledge and scientific process skills to support students in acquiring knowledge and skills of scientific inquiry (MoNE, 2013). As known, teachers play a key role in making educational reforms successful and the achievement of curriculum depends on how well teachers internalize its each unit as a whole. Despite curricular emphases, many teachers do not have the understanding and skills to use inquiry thoughtfully and appropriately in their classrooms (NRC, 2000; Narayan and Lamp, 2010; Capps and Crawford, 2013; Donnellya, McGarr, and O’Reilly, 2014; Gillies and Nichols, 2015). In this sense, it is crucial that teachers and PSTs must become aware of the targets of the new science curriculum because they have a responsibility in the vision of reform. Therefore, PSTs need to participate in practical works since their firsthand practicing experiences in learning science is essential to become fluent to develop their own students’ learning in the future.

Developing scientific process skills (SPSs) is one of the major goals of science education because of its central role in learning with understanding (Harlen, 1999). When inquiry approaches are put into practice in schools, it is expected to support the development of students’ research skills and experiences as scientists do while doing research (Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts, Fouskaki, Siakavara, Moschochoritou, and Chaniotakis, 2015). Inquiry includes the combination of processes skills with content knowledge of science, scientific reasoning and critical thinking (Lederman, Lederman, and Antink, 2013). In the light of the literature, Arnold, Kremer, and Mayer (2014) stated that students should systematically acquire the abilities necessary to perform scientific inquiry and obtain an understanding about scientific inquiry as well as content knowledge. SPSs can be used as tools in science education to gain both conceptual and procedural knowledge and understanding of science, and they are needed to be scientifically literate (Keil, Haney, and Zoffel, 2009). Science content and SPSs are both essential elements of science education, and the learning of one aids the learning of the other (Rillero, 1998). Students [learners] must be able to master certain SPSs, including formulating questions, planning investigations, using tools and techniques of data collecting, and making evidence-based conclusions (NRC, 1996) to do inquiry.

Student-centred approach helps students to gain the acquisition of both science content knowledge and process skills (Bunterm et al., 2014). Balanay and Roa (2013) evaluated the high school students’ performances such as setting up the equipment, following procedures, data collection, safety, and clean up procedure in conducting science laboratory experiment. They explored that the student-centred approach incorporated inquiry based science teaching had significantly improved the students’ SPSs. Similarly, Baseya and Francis (2011) mentioned that changing lab style to more student-centred approach could help students develop SPSs and understand the nature of science. Ketpichainarong, Panijpan, and Ruenwongsa (2010) explored the effectiveness of an inquiry-based laboratory designing activities which ranged from a guided to a more open inquiry for undergraduate biotechnology students. They concluded that the students gained acquisitions of skills such as asking good questions, predicting, problem solving, drawing conclusion, and communication along with content knowledge. However, Minner, Levy, and Century (2010) asserted that the evidence on the positive effects of inquiry-based education was not certain although there was a clear and positive trend favouring inquiry-based instructional practices, and also the relationship between the level of inquiry and the outcome of student achievement was modest. Similarly, Jiang and McComas (2012), presenting evidence based on PISA 2006 US data analysis, revealed that there is an unexpected negative correlation between the use of student investigations and student science achievement (as cited Jiang and McComas, 2015). Based on the literature, Yılmaz-Tüzün and Özgelen (2012) suggested that students’ failure in science could be ascribed to not using SPSs effectively by taking the relationship between students’ science achievement and use of SPSs into account. In another study, Arnold, Kremer, and Mayer (2014) studied on what kind of support students needed in inquiry tasks, and found that students needed support on procedural knowledge and understanding. Particularly focusing on designing experiment, they concluded that students need scaffolding in basic aspects of designing experiment such as determining dependent and independent variables, test times, and repetitions.

Scientific inquiry consists of different levels of abilities. Based on the literature, Yeh, Jen, and Hsu (2012) reported that research studies recommend teachers to continuously develop their own inquiry skills and instructional knowledge because their experiences have an important impact on how students develop inquiry abilities. Considering the importance of teacher education, Kim and Chin (2011) aimed to understand the challenges and difficulties in practicing inquiry work for pre-service science teachers (PSTs), and to develop their views and willingness for practicing inquiry activities through redesigning and practicing textbook activities. Researchers expressed that the PSTs gradually overcame their resistance and reluctance toward inquiry and practical work, and developed willingness and motivation to practice in everyday science classrooms. Accordingly, PSTs firstly should develop necessary SPSs, which are components of inquiry skills, in order to become effective guides for their students in the future. In the literature, most studies have not directly addressed SPSs of PSTs. However, studies related to PSTs’ experiences with inquiry and nature of science (NOS) provide some information about their proficiency in using SPSs that are indirectly related to inquiry practices in their courses. The literature points out that PSTs have problems with using SPSs (e.g., Abd-El-Khalick and Akerson, 2004; Plevyak, 2007; Yılmaz-Tüzün and Özgelen, 2012) and they have generally low level of SPSs (Leonard, 2009; Yıldırım, Atila, Özmen, and Sözbilir, 2013), because they did not have experiences of inquiry-based science instruction in their backgrounds (Kenny, 2010; Leonard, Boakes, and Moore, 2009). In this regard, primarily, enhancing SPSs of PSTs before their professional career is important for their long-term professional success as PSTs play a critical role in preparing scientifically literate students.

In this study, the aim was to investigate the possible effects of an instructional intervention which was performed in order to integrate the learning of science processes into the flow of the course titled Laboratory Applications in Science Education-I (LASE-I) on enhancing the SPSs of PSTs, and to identify problems in using SPSs. The activities were redesigned by purposively putting an emphasis on some of the aspects of science processes in order to increase the PSTs’ awareness and understanding of science process during the new redesigned laboratory applications course (R-LASE-I) term. The opinions of PSTs about the course progress were also investigated. To this end, the research questions were: (1) Did the SPSs levels of PSTs enhance significantly at the end of the instructional intervention? (2) Was there any correlation between the scores of the SPSs test and performance-based scores of the PSTs? (3) What were the problems of the PSTs in using SPSs? and (4) What were the opinions of the PSTs about the effect of the R-LASE-I course process on enhancing SPSs?