EVALUATION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 10TH-GRADE HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS CURRICULUM

Date

2023-12-21

Author

Sartaş, Feriha

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This study aims to evaluate the implementation of inquiry-based objectives in the 10th-grade physics curriculum that requires the use of experiments and simulations in central districts of Ankara. In other words, discrepancies, if there are, between the written and the implemented 10th-grade physics curriculum, and the extent of these discrepancies will be evaluated. This difference is revealed in the objectives involving "by using experiments or simulations" in their descriptions, which are included in the 10th-grade physics curriculum. In these objectives, which require the use of experiments and simulations, it is expected that physics teachers will cultivate their students’ skills that define science through inquiry. Therefore, in this study, these objectives are called "inquiry-based objectives.” When any discrepancy arises between the written and the implemented curriculum, the information gathered about these discrepancies will help identify weaknesses in implementing the curriculum. The identified discrepancies will allow for improving the curriculum implementation or other purposes. In this line, teacher and student questionnaires were conducted online during the second term of the 2021-2022 academic year with 54 physics teachers and their 2995 10th-grade students in 42 high schools in the central districts of Ankara. The research sample was created using the stratified cluster random sampling method. A two-stage stratification system was employed, considering the central districts of Ankara as the first stratum and the types of schools as the second stratum in this study. Types of schools were categorized as "Anatolian İmam Hatip High School, Anatolian High School, Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, Science High School, and Social Sciences High School." The questionnaires were completed two weeks before the end of the second term of the 2021-2022 academic year. During the remaining two weeks, interviews were conducted with 29 physics teachers from 24 schools. The interviews were conducted with one teacher from each of the 19 schools and two teachers from each of the five schools. However, interviews with the students could not be conducted as they stated they could not recall the answers to the interview questions. While teacher and student questionnaires were conducted during the second term of the 2021-2022 academic year, some student interviews were conducted during the first term of the 2022-2023 academic year. Since there was one summer holiday between the student questionnaires and the student interviews, meaningful data could not be obtained from the planned interviews with the students. Therefore, at this point of the study, the interviews conducted with the students have been disregarded, and the research proceeded as if no interviews with the students were carried out. This stands as one of the limitations of this study. After the teacher interviews, 14 lessons of 10 teachers from nine schools were observed, which involved experiments or simulations during the first term of the 2022-2023 academic year. All observations were completed during the second term of the 2022-2023 academic year. After conducting missing data analysis and data cleaning, descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data. In the questionnaires, 61% of the physics teachers and their tenth-grade students in the sample claimed to implement inquiry-based objectives in physics classes with student participation. In the interviews, 13% of the physics teachers indicated that they implemented inquiry-based objectives with the participation of all the students. During the observations, it was observed that 4% of the physics teachers implemented inquiry-based objectives with all students’ active participation. This study concludes that there is a 96% difference between the written curriculum and the implemented curriculum regarding the inquiry-based objectives. Thus, physics teachers should meticulously plan the process while imparting science process skills to students through inquiry-based objectives and ensure the active participation of the students.

Subject Keywords

curriculum evaluation, inquiry-based objectives, physics curriculum implementation, physics education

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/108322

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis