Abstract:

This study presents a novel approach used for teaching knowledge representation (KR) skills that were embedded in a 7th grade physics course and investigates its effect on students' performance. According to this approach, skills instruction should be explicit and integrated in a spiral manner into the science content and learning materials. The research goals were to determine how this explicit teaching of KR learning skills influences students' performance in the content topic of Energy and the KR skills taught (content-free and content-dependent).
The research population consisted of two groups of students who studied the physics unit “Energy”. One group learned according to the above approach, whereas the other group learned the same content but did not receive explicit instruction in KR skills throughout all stages of the research. Assessment was obtained through tasks administered after each stage. The results indicate a significant difference in students' performance regarding both content-free KR skills and content-dependent KR skills between the two groups. Furthermore, students who received explicit instruction in skills were better able to apply previously learned skills in a new situation. These results suggest the need to develop Science learning materials that embed learning skills in an explicit and spiral manner

Keywords:

Learning skills for science, Physics education.