A person is getting familiar with expressions such as warm, cool, hot, to warm and to cool from their early childhood onwards, and this helps one form concepts temperature and heat. However, studies show that children and adults still have great difficulties with understanding these concepts, despite commonly used physical concepts »temperature« and »heat«, which are thoroughly discussed in 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th grade in Slovenian schools. Their understanding and ideas are often wrong and far from professional. It is necessary for a teacher to check pupils' prior knowledge, their experience and possibly wrong ideas about temperature and heat before they start teaching these concepts. Based on this enquiry, the teacher later plans and carries out the teaching process, in which pupils learn new things and, more importantly, adapt their ideas about certain concepts to scientific claims. This fits with constructivist method of teaching which gives great importance to pupils' prior knowledge, their experience and their possibly wrong ideas. It also encourages pupils to work independently and to connect school with everyday life.
In this master's thesis I wanted to answer the following research questions: what do pupils in 5th grade of a primary school conceive of temperature and heat; does constructivist teaching help them understand these two terms better and more thoroughly; do pupils involved in constructivist teaching solve higher level questions easier and do they apply their newly gained knowledge to different situations; does constructivist teaching encourage pupils to further research of temperature and heat; do pupils through the process of constructivist teaching realize their prior understanding of temperature and heat is sometimes wrong; are pupils more satisfied with classes in which constructivist teaching is applied; and whether any differences can be seen between pupils involved in constructivist teaching and those taught traditionally.
For my master's thesis we carried out a research. The research was based on the quantitative and qualitative research approach. The descriptive and the casual-quasi-experimental research method were used. This research included 38 pupils from 5th class of the selected suburban school. The pupils were divided in a control and experimental group. Pupils were aged from 10 to 11 years. They each individually solved a pre-test, which served us as a basis for evaluating their understanding of temperature and heat. The pre-test also helped us prepare school lessons.
After the pre-test the control group was taught with traditional methods and the experimental group was taught according to principles of constructivist method. At the end of all lessons pupils from both groups were given tests for a regular assessment of their knowledge. A week after the discussion about temperature and heat was finished, the pupils included in our research individually solved the post-test (same as pre-test). At the end of research every pupils individually solved a survey questionnaire.
Results of our research show that pupils form their own ideas and conclusions about temperature and heat, however, they are usually different from scientific ones (e.g. temperature is heat, heat is measured with a thermometer, a thermometer shows the temperature of the measured substance ...). It is shown that constructivist methods of teaching help pupils understand concepts of temperature and heat much better and more in-depth. Pupils involved in constructivist teaching are more successful at solving questions from a higher level, they are better with applying knowledge to new situations, they are also better with detecting their wrong ideas about temperature and heat, and they enjoy lessons more. The results, of the presented research cannot be generalized, however, they put forward guidelines for further research.
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