THE ACTIVITIES BASED ON CONCEPTUAL CHANGE STRATEGIES PREPARED BY SCIENCE TEACHER CANDIDATES

Abstract

One of the main objectives of science education is to make students learn concepts meaningfully. It is known that students have some difficulties in understanding some concepts and they usually have misconceptions. In order to make meaningful learning possible, these misconceptions should be removed. Conceptual change strategies can be used for removing students' misconceptions in science education. Primary school science education is of great importance for meaningful science learning. Provided that science teachers teach scientific concepts correctly, students can be expected to learn meaningfully. Because of this, science teacher candidates should learn conceptual change strategies and how to apply them. This study contains science teacher candidates' activities related to conceptual change strategies, such as; conceptual change texts, analogies, models and concept cartoons. The study was conducted in 2009-2010 academic year, at Dokuz Eylül University, Buca Education Faculty. This 5-week study was carried out during Special Teaching Methods course. 28 students joined the study. This study was helpful in that the science teacher candidates involved in the study learned conceptual change strategies better and they prepared activities based on them