Effects of Cooperative Learning on Students'Understanding of Metallic Bonding

摘要

The present study focused on investigating the effectiveness of instruction vianewly developed teaching materials based on cooperative learning when compared to atraditional approach, on ninth grade students' understanding of metallic bonding. Fifty-seven ninth grade science students from two science classes in the same high schoolparticipated in this study. The same teacher taught metallic bonding with cooperativelearning to an experimental group (N=28) and with a traditional teacher centred approachto a control group (N=29). Students' conceptual understanding of metallic bonding wasmeasured using the Metallic Bonding Concept Test. The results from the Student's t testindicated that the mean score of the students in the experimental group was significantlyhigher in the experimental group (78.60, SD=8.62), than in the control group (54.33, SD=9.11) after treatment. In the light of the results from the concept test and individualinterviews, the misconceptions related to metallic bonding were found less in theexperimental group than traditional. Five of these misconceptions were firstly identifiedin this study. The individual interviews which were done with students from experimentalgroup immediately after the instruction showed that students had positive perceptions abouttheir cooperative work experiences.