Examining Elementary School Students’ Scientific Process Skills Levels

With the preparation of the science curricula in our country in accordance with constructivism, scientific process skills have also gained importance. The examination of science education programs revealed that scientific process skills are either considered as a separate learning area or classified as field-specific skills. In this context, scientific process skills are defined as skills that enable students to learn science while actively involving in the learning process and conducting research appropriate for their age. Individuals with these skills are aware of how scientific research is conducted and solve problems they encounter during a daily life by using these skills. In this respect, it is critical to teach scientific process skills to students starting from an early age. To this end, this study aims to determine third and fourth grade students’ scientific process skills. The participants consisted of 147 third and fourth grade students. For data collection, the basic skills scale with 31 items was administered to the participants. The reliability coefficient of the scale (KR – 20) was 0.83, and the average difficulty of the scale was 0.55. Frequencies and percentages were calculated and One-way analysis of multiple variances (MANOVA) were conducted to identify gender and grade level differences. For analysis, the SPSS 21.0 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) program was used. The results revealed that while there was no significant difference based on grade level, a significant difference was observed in favor of female students in terms of scientific process skills.