New Perspectives in Science Education

In this research, “The Cell” unit has been taught to the first year high school students via biology course, and the project based learning approach has been applied in the class to seek for the academic success of the students. In the, experimental methods such as pretest control group and the posttest control group model has been applied. 

This study has been applied to the first grade students in the High School of Dumlupınar which is in the city of Konya and has lasted for six weeks. Before the application, two classes have been chosen depending on the suggestions of the teachers and the results of the pre-tests. 74 students have participated in the research; first half of whom have been in the experiment group and the latter, the control group. Both of these classes have been chosen objectively.

In the study, personal information forms have been used to collect data, and this data has been analysed by the programme of SPSS 11.0. Then, the biology achievement test has been applied to these students. The statistical analysis of the success test, which has been applied to control and experiment groups, has been evaluated by the programme of Minitab 15.0.

In order to analyze the data statistically, normality test has been used for controlling the data between groups; F test for the equality of standard deviation and arithmetic average, and independent T test for the comparison of two independent groups has been used.

At the end of the research, the project based learning approach which has been applied to the experiment group has been found more beneficial than the current academic program applied to the control group. Because of the project based learning approach centralizes the students and provides them to be more active in the class, for this reason this approach has been found more effective than the traditional based learning approach.  

Key words: Project Based Learning Approach, Biology Education, The Cell, Success of Students, High School Biology