The effects of teaching applications with real life content on the levels of pre-service teachers' abilities to associate daily life with astronomy and electrical learning topics

Abstract

Students’ associating their knowledge with daily life demonstrates great significance in terms of understanding the importance of topics they learn in school as well as knowing where and how they are used in their daily life. In this context, teachers who will reflect these relationships in learning environments must have sufficient knowledge and experience. In this research, it was aimed to investigate the effects of teaching applications with real life content on the levels of pre-service teachers' abilities to associate daily life with astronomy and electrical learning topics. The sample consisted of totally 30 fourth class students who were at the department of Science Teaching in the Faculty of Education. In the research, astronomy and electrical learning topics were chosen and activities based on real life problems in these were applied. The data gathered were based on the effects of these activities. The research was conducted following an experimental design and data were collected applying the pre-post test pattern. The data were collected through open-ended questionnaires related to the use of learning topics in daily life. As a result, it was found that the levels of associating the learning topics with daily life were nearly doubled in the field of electrical and astronomy learning topics.