Examining biology teachers candidates' scientific process skill levels and comparing these levels in terms of various variables

Abstract

It is very important to develop students science process skills which have considerable role in educational settings in order to facilitate students' learning abilities, support their critical thinking skills and make them competent in research ways and methods in science and social sciences. One of the most useful steps to promote scientific process skills is to train teachers which have gained these skills. In this aspect, the aim of this study is to determine the biology teacher candidates' levels of scientific process skills and to compare the different variables. For this reason, Scientific Method Abilities Test (SMAT) which has 36 multiple choice questions, is applied to 121 biology pre-service teachers enrolling in Necatibey Faculty of Education of Balkesir University. The results of this study show that scientific process skill levels of pre-service biology teachers' need to be developed and that there are no statistically significant difference between pre-service in terms of gender and age, except there is for the class level. When theresults of the study compared to other similar studies, it can be regarded that science process skill levels of biology student teachers' is in an intermediate level (20, 43) which is lower than other studies.