Examining fifth-grade students’ level of associating some daily-life events with “changes of state”

Preparing individuals for life and helping them to make sense of daily-life events are among the principal objectives of education. Science and science-related subjects are extremely important in achieving these objectives. Science courses aim to help students to gain the necessary skills to provide logical and creative solutions to the problems they may encounter in daily life as well as providing theoretical knowledge they can use in the course (Pınarbaşı, Doymuş, Canpolat & Bayrakçeken, 1998). The purposes of the science curriculum developed by the Turkish Ministry of National Education in 2013 included “ensuring that students take responsibility for daily-life problems and use their science-related knowledge, science process skills and other life skills in solving these problems”.

One of the main objectives of science teaching is to help students to use information that they have learned in their everyday life (İlkörücü-Göçmençelebi & Özkan, 2009). While teaching the subjects, it is more effective if examples from daily life are provided and scenarios are built (Evcim, 2010). Meaningful learning by means of associating knowledge with daily-life events helps knowledge to be stored in the long-term memory (Ay, 2008). In other words, students with the ability to explain daily-life events can be said to achieve meaningful learning (Coşkun, 2010). In addition, students who are able to use their knowledge in their everyday lives are considered to be more highly motivated towards their courses (McCombs, 1996), and their learning is more effective (Fortus, Krajcik, Charles, Marx & Mamlok-Naaman, 2005). To this end, science teachers have recently begun to demonstrate the connection between concepts and everyday life to their students (Haynicz, Flecher & Rebello, 2006).

Studies About Daily-Life Events

The level of association of students’ knowledge with daily-life events is an indicator of to what extent the education provided departs from rote learning. The knowledge given to students throughout their education becomes permanent to the extent that it can be associated with daily-life events, and this knowledge can be used more easily for interpreting new situations (Özmen, 2003). Although the international literature includes a limited number of studies conducted on students’ level of associating science concepts with daily life (İlkörücü-Göçmençelebi, 2007), there have been many studies conducted on this topic in Turkey (Bozkurt, 2008; Coştu, Ünal & Ayas, 2007; Enginar, Saka & Sesli, 2002; Hürcan & Önder, 2012; İlkörücü-Göçmençelebi, 2007; Özmen, 2003; Pekdağ et al., 2013; Taşdemir & Demirbaş, 2010; Yadigaroğlu & Demircioğlu, 2012). Enginar, Saka and Sesli (2002) reported that second-grade high-school students failed to sufficiently associate the concepts of biology with daily life. The study by Özmen (2003) also revealed that university students failed to use acid-base concepts to explain daily-life events to the desired extent. Coştu, Ünal and Ayas (2007) also reported that instruction enriched with teacher-guided group discussions on daily-life problems enhanced students’ ability to interpret daily-life events. Similarly, in the study by İlkörücü-Göçmençelebi (2007), sixth-grade elementary students’ level of associating the biological knowledge provided to them in the science course with daily life was not found to be very high. Another study conducted by Bozkurt (2008) examined high-school students’ level of associating physics concepts with daily life, and revealed that they were able to associate the concepts of optics only at a medium level. The study by Hürcan and Önder (2012) examined the seventh-grade elementary students’ level of associating the science concepts they learned in the science and technology course with daily-life events and discovered that they failed to associate them at the desired level. The study conducted by Yadigaroğlu and Demircioğlu (2012) to examine pre-service chemistry teachers’ level of associating their chemistry knowledge with daily life found that they had difficulty in doing so. Pekdağ et al. (2013) also tried to examine university students’ level of associating their chemistry knowledge with daily life and to determine whether academic success had an impact on the level of association. They found that the students failed to sufficiently associate their chemistry knowledge with everyday situations.

The studies mentioned above all examined to what extent students at different educational stages associate their knowledge with daily life. In contrast, Yılmaz’s (2008) study reported that among the topics of chemistry, changing states of matter was the one that sixth-grade students most frequently failed to associate with daily life. Therefore, we can say that students are not able to associate “changes of state” with daily life to the desired extent.

In Turkey, compulsory education was extended from eight years to 12 years with the adoption of the “4+4+4 model” in the 2012-2013 academic year, where primary education was rearranged and divided into two parts, i.e., elementary education and secondary education. Elementary education covers grades one to four, while secondary education covers grades five to eight.

With this new arrangement, science courses began to be taught from the third grade (Ministry of National Education [MoNE], 2013). Therefore, students first meet science and science-related concepts in the third grade. “States of matter” is among the subjects covered by the third-grade science curriculum, together with other subjects such as “sense organs”, “forces”, “light and sound”, “living creatures”, “electricity in our life” and “our world”. In the third grade, students are asked to classify materials as solids, liquids or gases. In the fourth grade, they are expected to explain the phenomena of melting and freezing by means of the effects of heat. In the fifth grade, the aim is that students should be able to explain melting, freezing, boiling, condensation, evaporation, sublimation and deposition based on their knowledge of heat exchange (MoNE, 2013). As mentioned above, the topic “changes of state” is incorporated into science curricula from the elementary level to the university level.

Therefore, various studies have been conducted at different levels of education to examine the extent to which changes of state concepts are associated with daily-life events. Beşoluk and Önder (2010) examined high-school students’ level of using basic concepts related to changes of state in scientifically explaining some of the events they encounter in everyday life. They found that students did not learn these concepts in accordance with the scientific facts and failed to sufficiently associate them with daily-life events. Ayas and Çoştu (2001) investigated the first-grade high-school students’ level of understanding of the concepts of evaporation, condensation and boiling, and found that students limited the condensation and boiling phenomena to the case of water, and thought that these changes of state could not occur in other liquids such as alcohols and that temperature would rise during the process of boiling. The study by Boz (2004) also examined the sixth-, eighth- and 11th-grade students’ level of understanding of condensation. At the end of the study, it was found that most of the sixth- and eighth-grade students did not understand how vapour coming from boiling water condensed on a plate. Buluş-Kırıkkaya and Güllü (2008) also conducted a study to identify the misconceptions of fifth-grade elementary students about heat vs temperature and evaporation vs boiling. They reported that students had many misconceptions about the differences between heat and temperature, and boiling and evaporation.

It is in the nature of learning that misunderstanding basic concepts may cause students to fail in properly learning other higher-level concepts and to face a dilemma while relating new knowledge to their existing knowledge (Canpolat & Pınarbaşı, 2012). Therefore, correct learning of basic concepts is a must if students’ future learning is to be successful. One of the ways to ensure this is to associate scientific knowledge learned at school with daily-life events (Ayas & Özmen, 1998). The level of associating knowledge learned at school with daily-life events is important in facilitating the lives of individuals and showing whether or not the knowledge has been absorbed (Pınarbaşı et al., 1998). Based on the findings of these studies, we can say that students are not able to associate the concepts taught in the science course with daily life, at least not at the desired level (Hürcan & Önder, 2012; Lay et al., 2013; Pekdağ et al., 2013). However, relating what they have learned to daily life enhances children’s interest in, and attitude towards, science (Black, 2009; Roediger, 2000). In order to achieve meaningful learning, students must associate the concepts they have learned with the daily-life events that impress them (Ayas & Özmen, 1998). Associating science courses with events in everyday life can help teachers encourage successful learning in their students (Mayoh & Knutton, 1997).

Aim of the Study

Teaching basic science concepts correctly and accurately during elementary and secondary education is important for helping students understand the more detailed and complicated subjects they will encounter in the later stages of education. Proper construction of basic science concepts in the mind will also help students solve the problems they face and associate their knowledge with their everyday life (Beşoluk & Önder, 2010). Since the topic “changes of state” involves learning information which can be used for interpreting many daily-life events (Coştu, Ünal & Ayas, 2007) and since there are only a limited number of studies in the literature conducted with fifth-grade secondary students, this study aims to examine fifth-grade students’ level of associating the changes of state topic with some daily-life events.