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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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Implications
It is recommended that the use of the SCDT test appears to be a useful tool for science teachers to get to know their students' reasoning ability levels. In this way, science teachers are able to determine their students' cognitive capacities. Then, they are able to construct their instruction accordingly. If the students' cognitive development lags behind the cognitive demands of curriculum and teaching, then teachers need to become aware of the limitations of their students. In this process, to promote students' reasoning skills, it becomes necessary for science teachers to use some concrete materials in their science classroom. Knowing intelligence-stages can also facilitate and stimulate discovery learning and problem-solving behaviours and promote students' inquiry abilities. In this way, science teachers would extent students' cognitive development and accelerate it in the transitional levels (Collette & Chiappetta, 1989).
Science teachers should be aware of the fact that cognitive progress is not completely dependent on biological factors, but also the particular activities stimulated and reinforced by the cultural and educational environments. Teachers' duties in this process are to implement ethnographic research to draw out cultural and social patterns of their students. To develop students' cognitive and conceptual development, apart from the learning cycle approach (Ayas, 1993), currently using 5E and 7E models at science teaching learning process are strictly recommended (Çepni et al. 2001). Therefore, all science teachers should take in-service courses related to the philosophies of constructivism, and developing materials carrying characteristics of the 5E and 7E models.
Copyright (C) 2004 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 5, Issue 1, Article 1 (Apr., 2004). All Rights Reserved.
