The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of 7E learning cycle model as an inquiry-based learning on the improvement of 5th grade students&rsquo / critical thinking skills. This study was conducted during 2005-2006 spring semester in a private primary school in Sakarya. A total of 46 fifth grade students from two different classes of the same science teacher was involved in the study. Two classes were randomly assigned as experimental group and control group. While students in the control group were instructed with traditional method, inquiry-based learning was carried out in the experimental group. Since phenomena that show cause and effect relationships are good inquiry subjects, water cycle in the science and technology curriculum was taken as the unit in the present study. The Cornell Conditional Reasoning Test, from the Cornell Critical Thinking Skills Tests Series was administered as pre-test and post-test to students both in the experimental and control groups. The effects of gender and family income of the students on the dependent variable were also checked. Statistical Analysis of Covariance was used to test the hypotheses of this study. The results indicated that the experimental group achieved significantly better than the control group in both the critical thinking skill test. In other words, inquiry-based learning improved students&rsquo / critical thinking skills. On the other hand, no significant effect of gender and family income on improvement of students&rsquo / critical thinking skills was found.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12607661/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Creators | Mecit, Ozlem |
| Contributors | Tekkaya, Ceren |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Ph.D. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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