New Perspectives in Science Education

The term “science process skills” (SPS) is used to describe skills that facilitate learning, help learners gain the ability to do research and allow them to be active in the learning environment, and increase retention of knowledge. One of the goals of science education is to develop science process skills. One of the goals of science education is to develop these science process skills.

With the aim of exploring the factors affecting the development of science process skills, this research was carried out with a total number of 147 students studying in a middle school.

Such science process skills of students as observation, measurement-classification, time-space relationships, predicting (forecasting), controlling variables, making hypothesis, experimenting, control-decision making, interpreting data and making inferences are discussed in the current paper.

Through observations which were made ​​by teachers during the activities carried out in the lessons, each student was given scores ranging from 1 to 5 points depending on their science process skills and the total SPS score was obtained for each student by summing these points up.

The relationships between the students’ SPS levels and such variables as their gender, pre-school education, parents' education levels, family background, and also the ages of the mother and the father were examined. Moreover, the impacts of students’ SPS levels on their success in the lessons were identified. The data obtained from the study were statistically analyzed through a software package called SPSS 15.

The findings of the data analysis showed that gender, the mother’s education level, family background, ages of the mother and the father does not have any significant effect on the SPS (p> 0.05). It has been found out that preschool education and fathers’ higher education levels increase the students’ levels of SPS of (p <0.05). It has been also identified that the students with high levels of SPS get higher grades from the courses (p <0.05).

This study showed that fathers’ education level has an effect on the students’ development of SPS and thus mothers' education level may also be influential. In our country, the 12-year compulsory education should be taken into account for raising future generations with advanced science process skills

The results obtained through this study show that students with developed SPS are more successful in their classes. When this evidence is taken into consideration, it has been concluded that it will be useful to take necessary steps in order to develop and adapt instructional activities or tasks starting from students’ pre-school education, which will contribute to improve their SPS levels.

Furthermore, the study suggests that some in-service training activities regarding SPS might be organized for teachers as they are influential in the activities which they will conduct, and materials or resources which they will choose for their classes.