COMPARISON OF TURKISH PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS AND SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS WITHIN THE SCOPE OF NATURAL HISTORY TOPICS

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Aditya

Natural history education connects long-term processes from Earth’s formation to recent changes, but understanding it is challenging—especially regarding Earth’s age. This study investigates and compares knowledge levels of secondary school students and Turkish pre-service science teachers on selected natural history topics. Using a qualitative case study design with 15 open-ended questions analyzed by content analysis, results show low correct answer rates for time perception for both groups. Teachers outperform students on living diversity, while students answer more correctly on Earth transformation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background: Natural history and its educational value

Rationale for the study

COMPARISON OF TURKISH PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS AND SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS WITHIN THE SCOPE OF NATURAL HISTORY TOPICS Serap ÖZ AYDIN, Selin ŞAHİN Abstract: Natural history includes the period from the formation of the Earth to recent times and all the changes it has gone through throughout this vast period. The biggest challenge in understanding natural history is the age of the Earth. Even though natural history is quite difficult to understand, pre-service science teachers are expected to be knowledgeable about this matter to a fundamental degree. Therefore, this study aims to determine the knowledge levels of secandary school students and pre-service science teachers on some natural history topics and compare compare these two groups in this context. . To conduct such research in which a qualitativenatured case study design was used, the data obtained through 15 open-ended questions were analyzed through content analysis. As a result, percentages of correct answers regarding the time perception component were quite low both for secaondary students and pre-service science teachers. While both groups were close in the component of the transformation of the Earth, it was founden that students answered more questions correctly. As expected, pre-service teachers correctly answered more questions regarding the component of diversity of living things than the students. Key words: Natural history education, teacher education, teacher knowledge 1. Introduction Nature is an entity that involves everything from quarks, regarded as the smallest particle of matter, to the universe that is assumed to contain at least two hundred billion galaxies, and living and non-living beings (Khann, 1999) . This entity includes various living and non-living elements, processes, and mechanisms; it can affect and be affected, can change, and be changed, can be renewed; it has no certain boundaries, and it is an open system that has come to exist outside the human impact (Kocataş, 2006). These changes that nature has experienced in living and non-living things over time give rise to natural history. Fleischner (2001, 2005) defined natural history as a practice that is guided by truth and honesty and deliberately focuses on the increased human attention and power of perception. What was meant with practice is the ability of humankind to use survival skills in nature since the dawn of time. Furthermore, Gilligan (2009) presented a comprehensive description of natural history: natural history is a fieldwork-based science that uses comparative and descriptive methods to understand and interpret the biotic and abiotic components of the natural world and their relationships, and how they have evolved in time. As an attempt to understand a long process, natural history can also be referred to asthe story of nature (Hampton & Wheeler, 2012) . This story accounts for the origin, evolution, and behaviors of the organisms as well as the observation of their relationship with one another (Wilcove & Eisner, 2000) . To Arnold (2003), the history of nature helped the generation of many sciences such as astronomy, geology, paleontology, biology, ecology, ethology, geography, systematics, and genetics. As mentioned above, knowing the natural history, which includes many sciences, both conceptually and learning the changes that nature has undergone over millions of years will enable us to get to know nature closely. Thus, people will be more willing to protect nature, taking sustainability into account. However, children and youth of today suffer from nature deficit syndrome that stems from the distancing from nature (Louv, 2008) . While this detachment with the distancing negatively affects their awareness of nature, interests, attitudes, and desires to know, it causes them to be less active in the individual precautions that could be taken to protect nature (Pyle, 1993; Kahn, 2002) . Therefore, the first step to protect nature is to get to know it c

FAQs

What does the study compare between the two groups?

The study compares knowledge levels of Turkish pre-service science teachers and secondary school students regarding natural history topics.

What method is used to collect and analyze data?

Data are collected through 15 open-ended questions and analyzed using content analysis within a qualitative case study design.

Which topic areas show the biggest knowledge gaps?

The time perception component has low percentages of correct answers for both groups, while pre-service teachers perform better on diversity of living things.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Aditya