Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
XIII. European Conference on Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sofija, Bulgaristan, 19 - 22 Mayıs 2017, ss.32
The Relations of Academic Success, Scientific Process Skills and Success in Non Routine
Tests of Primary School Students in Grade 8.
İsmet SAHIN & İdris ASLAN
University of Kocaeli, Faculty of Education, Umuttepe, 41380 İzmit
The main purpose of schools is to educate new generations and prepare them for a successful life. “Success” here may be defined as positive outcomes of a person‟s activities and decisions as a result of his abilities and education (Sığrı and Gurbuz, 2011). Academic success is the abilities gained or knowledge obtained in a school system that are measured by test points, assessment of teachers or by both measures (Kenç & Oktay, 2002).
The vision of Science curriculum that is developed in 2005 and revised in 2013 is to develop science literacy in children that means they will be able to think critically, creatively, analytically and will gain research and inquiry skills, find alternative solutions to problems and work collaboratively and have
problem solving and decision making skills and for all that they should have scientific process skills (MEB, 2005; 2013). But in international examinations such as PISA and TIMMS, the results our children achieved is far from what is targeted. Nowadays, the questions asked in international examinations are mostly non
routine items and they require more thinking skills, the solutions are not easily reachable, can not be solved in simple steps or don‟t have a certain answer (Çelik & Guler, 2013). It seems that the vision of our science curriculum have not been achieved, even if our children is successful in schools and achieve high grade marks in lessons. So, this research is on the relation of academic success, scientific process skills, and success in non routine tests. For this purpose, a scientific process skills test that is developed by Aydoğdu & others (2012) and non routine science test that is developed with items derived from various Pisa and Tımms tests are administered to 203 grade 8 students.
The results showed that the success in non routine test is highly correlated both basic and high level scientific process skills. And both non routine test success, scientific process skills is also highly correlated with academic success that is the average scores of students in schools. This puts that the problem is if a students is successful in school, he or she is also successful in non routine test and and have more scientific process skills. The reason of general failure then in examinations such as Pisa or Timms may be the number of successful students our schools educate.
Keywords: Scientific Process Skills, Academic Success, Non Routine tests, Success in Pisa and Timms