| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 理學院網路學習碩士在職專班 === 92 === The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in problem solving ability of natural science by using Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and traditional teaching approaches. The research was based on the quasi-experimental design. Participants in this study are 83 junior high school students come from two classes of 8th grade of a public junior high school in Taipei city. One class underwent PBL instruction (experimental group) and another one was taught by traditional teaching approach (control group). Before the study, students from each group were divided into 8 small groups. In order to keep uniformity in academic performance, the members of each small group are consisted of the student with high, average and low academic performance in mathematics, Chinese and Science courses. The “Cartesian diver” was chosen as the teaching topics because it contains the conceptions of buoyant force、pressure、torque and Newton’s laws of motion. The research tools used in this study are: Web-based Two-tier Diagnosing Test of Buoyant Force, Problem Solving Ability Questionnaire of Natural Science of Junior High school students and Web-based Attitude Toward Natural Science Scale. Both groups took pre-test questionnaires as a criterion for the evaluation of the experiment. After the end of a six-hour instruction (6 weeks later), post–test questionnaires were performed.
The following conclusion can be obtained from the study:
1. Excluding from the influence on pre-test, students in the experimental group show a remarkable improvement not only on “Well-structured” but also on “Ill-structure” problem solving ability.
2. The finding also indicates that experimental group has better attitude toward natural science that is helpful to promote problem solving ability.
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