In addition to knowing the subject and methods of teaching, a teacher should also recognize the approaches of elementary school students to solving natural science problems. In Slovenia, the monitoring of students' approaches to solving natural science problems has not yet been systematically taught as far as natural sciences are concerned. Moreover, no systematic identification of students potentially talented for natural sciences has been developed. A lack of proper approaches in these aspects has led to the development of this master's thesis. As a part of the thesis research, a set of experiments was designed enabling students to actively learn physical concepts while their teacher conducts physical experiments. At the same time, this enables the teacher to monitor students' approaches to solving natural science problems and possibly recognise the students talented for natural sciences.
In the theoretical part of this thesis, the characteristics of science are described, natural science and natural science literacy are defined, and natural science-related processes in connection with the curricula of natural science subjects are specified. A description of talented students' characteristics is also given, focusing primarily on the students talented for natural sciences.
In the experimental part, the purpose of the experiment set is first laid out in detail. The criteria applied during the experiment selection are then specified along with the relation between the designed experiments and the subjects from the curricula. Three sets of experiments in the field of hydrostatic pressure and fluid flow have been selected. Measurements with explanations make it possible to quantitatively monitor the background of physical phenomena that students describe on a semi-quantitative level. Detailed instructions on how to carry out selected experiment sets are also given.
In the empirical part, an attempt is made to formulate a preliminary protocol to monitor the student's success in providing correct forecasts of experiment results and related explanations, the use of knowledge, any occurrence of cognitive conflicts, the application of knowledge in new situations, and the use of physical concepts and scientific language. This preliminary protocol has been used in a preliminary study to verify the suitability of the selected subject, physical experiments and related issues, the occurrence of cognitive conflict, the rationale of involving additional tasks, etc. The findings have been used to design a protocol for the set of experiments.
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