This study investigated the 9th grade students' / achievement regarding diffusion and osmosis in relation to reasoning ability, prior knowledge and gender. A total of 397 ninth grade students participated in the study. The Test of logical thinking (TOLT) and the Diffusion and Osmosis Diagnostic Test (DODT) were administered to determine students' / reasoning ability and achievement in diffusion and osmosis, respectively. DODT results showed that the range of correct answers for the first tier was 41 % to 91%. When both tiers were
combined, the correct responses were reduced to a range of 21% to 61%. This result reveals that students have enough content knowledge but they don&rsquo / t know the underlying reason of their choice in diffusion and osmosis concepts. Pearson
Product Moment correlations showed a statistically significant positive correlation between achievement and students' / prior knowledge & / reasoning ability. MRC Analysis was conducted to determine the contribution of prior knowledge, reasoning ability and gender to the achievement. Prior knowledge and reasoning ability, but not gender, made a statistically significant contribution to the variation on achievement. Prior knowledge and reasoning ability together predicted 37 % of
the variation on achievement. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was computed to determine the variables were best predicting students&rsquo / achievement. While prior knowledge explains 33 % of the variation in achievement, reasoning
ability explains only 4 % of the variation in achievement. Results indicate that prior knowledge is a better predictor than reasoning ability in students&rsquo / achievement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12606666/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Creators | Korkmaz, Oguz |
| Contributors | Tekkaya, Ceren |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
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