Classroom Teacher Candidates’ Sufficiency of Analyzing the Experiments in Primary School Science and Technology Textbooks’ in Terms of Scientific Process Skills

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the sufficiency of classroom teacher candidates about determining the purpose of the experiments and science process skills intended to be gained by those experiments which are in 4th and 5.th grade Science and Technology textbooks. First, the textbooks of 4th and 5th grades were examined. The experiments that have more scientific process skills have been chosen. The steps for doing experiments were given to the students in a questionnaire and asked them to find the purpose of the experiments and which scientific processes skills were used. 20 students, who were at their fourth year in an Education Faculty Classroom Teacher Department in 2005-2006 education year, were interviewed related to the answers they have given. At the end of the research, it has found that the teacher candidates were successful in determining the purpose of the experiments and the basic process skills but they have problems with determining the experimental process skills such as “making hypothesis”, “determining the variables and checking” and “using the data and making models”. It’s also found that classroom teacher candidates confuse science process skills with Bloom taxonomy and the stages of problem solving method.