Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 1 (June, 2007) Haluk ÖZMEN and Osman KENAN Determination of the Turkish primary students' views about the particulate nature of matter Previous Contents Next

Instrumentation and analysis

In this study, a test was used to gather data. The test consists of 36 items with three alternative answers that are "increase", "decrease", "constant" and the items are related to the changes of microscopic properties of solid, liquid and gas matters during phase changing, cooling, heating and pressing of them. These parts are based on the current science curriculum in Turkey. In the curricula, students are informed related to the concepts of phase changing, cooling, heating, vaporizing, and boiling in a basic level. Therefore, these concepts were used in preparing the test. Test items were prepared by the researcher. The dispersion of the test items are like this: 1, 5, 9, 13, 16, 21, 25, 29 and 33^rd items were prepared to determine the students' thoughts on if there would be any changes in the size of particles of matter in the result of phase changing, heating, cooling and pressing; 2, 6, 10, 14, 19, 23, 26, 30 and 34^th items were prepared to determine the students¡¦ thoughts about how changes there would be among the spaces of the particles of matter in the result of phase changing, heating, cooling and pressing; and 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32 and 36^th items were prepared to determine the students' ideas on if there would be any changes with the number of the particles of matter. The students were asked to choose one alternative among three. Thus, their ideas about microscopic properties of matter were tried to be determined. The test was piloted with 39 students that were in 4^th, 5^th and 6^th grade (13 students from each grade level) to control its readability and understandability. And some modifications were made in the light of the pilot study to produce the final version of the test. While the test was implementing, papers were distributed to the students and it took half an hour to fill the test. The number of the students' answers to the items in the test was countered and then passed into percentage.