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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science
Learning and Teaching, Volume 5, Issue 1, Article 1 (Apr., 2004) Salih ÇEPNİ, Tuncay ÖZSEVGEÇ and Lale CERRAH Turkish middle school students'cognitive development levels in science
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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science
Learning and Teaching, Volume 5, Issue 1, Article 1 (Apr., 2004) Salih ÇEPNİ, Tuncay ÖZSEVGEÇ and Lale CERRAH Turkish middle school students'cognitive development levels in science
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Method
Subjects
The subjects were 445 seventh-to-eighth-grade students in schools chosen to reflect a cross-section of middle to high socio-economic levels at private and public middle schools in five cities in Turkey. Within these schools, the participating students were chosen using random selection from the classes. While 247 (55.5%) subjects were male, 198 (44.5%) subjects were female. Students' ages are between 107 and 199 months, mean = 147 months, and standard deviation = 10.9 months. All participants live in the central areas of five different cities in Turkey. The reasons for selecting those five cities in five regions are because of the fact that they are economically, socially, culturally, climatically, geographically slightly different from each other. City B and D's socio-economic levels are considered as medium. The economies of these cities are mostly based on agriculture. City A has a high population and its economy would be accepted as medium. City C is a big and modern city and its economy mostly based on tourism. City E is a quite small city and has a low income and social level. Students' success rates on the LGS for city A, B and C is above the average. While city D is the average, students from city E is under the average. Because of these reasons, students live in city C and D in the western part of Turkey are suppose to have higher cognitive developments than city A, B and E in the east part of Turkey.
Private schools are also different from the public schools with some points. They select their students with a nation-wide private schools examination (PSE). Students in these schools come from socially and economically high class and pay quite high tuition. Technical and physical environments of these schools are well designed, classrooms are not crowded and generally qualified and well-known teachers are employed with high salary. They follow the same curriculum with public schools developed by the National Ministry of Education. For the time being, approximately five percent of the middle school students go to these types of private schools. Although public schools are very common all over the country, there are a few private schools in each city. However, the new government tries to improve the numbers of these schools in each city by financially supporting all successful students at public schools. The profiles of the subjects, by school type, year level, and city are shown in Table 1.
Table1. Distribution of subjects according to school type, year level and city
Cities
Public 7
Public 8
Private 7
Private 8
Total
City A
27
30
19
19
95
City B
28
29
20
20
97
City C
30
30
20
20
100
City D
19
29
29
-
77
City E
38
38
-
-
76
Total
142
156
88
59
445
From Table 1, it can be seen that the sample consists of ten public school classes and seven private school classes.
The reasons for this particular selection of middle school students are;
According to the Piaget’s theory, 7th and 8th grade middle school students should be in transition between concrete and formal operational level such that instructional strategies in schools have substantial effect on their cognitive development.
Students come across many science concepts for the first time at 7th and 8th grade and their knowledge in science concepts is limited. Therefore, they could be expected to directly use their thinking abilities while answering the questions.
Copyright (C) 2004 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 5, Issue 1, Article 1 (Apr., 2004). All Rights Reserved.
