Action Research on the Teaching of Scientific Inquiry with Toys: Examples of “Exposure of Wave” and “Bonding the Big by Small”

• Main Authors: LIN,HUI-HSUAN, 林惠瑄
• Other Authors: Hsu, Liang-Rong
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/9rrrvc

碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 科學教育與應用學系碩士在職專班 === 104 === The purpose of this study was to design the instruction of scientific inquiry that was based on science toys. This study adopted action research to explore pupils’ ability of scientific inquiry, learning interests, the difficulties in teaching and the professional growth of teachers. The research subjects are fifth and sixth graders in an elementary school in central Taiwan. Two science toy units of “Exposure of Wave” and “Bonding the Big by Small” were designed, each unit contains three sessions. This study conduct two-stage teaching cycle is proceeded, in which a class of students was sampled. The collected data included recording of teaching, teaching journals, activity worksheets, learning interest questionnaire, observations by collaborative teacher, interview records, and assessment of scientific inquiry ability.After analyzed the data, the following conclusions are summarized. (1) The five-point Likert scale of learning interest questionnaire at the first stage presented the mean was 3.79 (full score= 5), and it reveals 3.78 at the second stage. The students’ interested in “ Teaching of Scientific Inquiry with Toys” were closed to the“ agree” level. (2)The evaluation of Scientific Inquiry Ability (full score=17) showed the average score 7.21 for the pretest group and 10.26 for the posttest group at the first stage. The average score for the pretest group at the second stage was 8.59 and 11.78 for the posttest group. At both stages, the score of Scientific Inquiry Ability for the pretest group was significantly higher than the posttest group (p< .01). (3) The difficulties of teachers’teaching due to the three kinds variable, researchers produced PPT to improve students' understanding of the characteristic of variable.The other improvements including revised the activity worksheets, and modify the manipulate method of “Bonding the Big by Small”. (4) The teahcer professional growth included enhancing the knowledge of how to adopt of science toys, the comprehension of inquiry-based teaching, the ability of lesson planning, and inquiry-based teaching, competence. Finally, several suggestions are proposed for teaching of scientific inquiry with toys, and the future research of the teachers and researchers who intend to use the science toys to design the teaching of scientific inquiry.