Effects of Socio-scientific Issues Based-Learning on Scientific Reasoning Ability of Lower Secondary School Students

Abstract

This study was quasi-experimental research. The purposes of this research were to 1) compare the scientific reasoning ability of students who learn science through Socio-scientific Issue basedlearning before and after experiment and 2) compare the scientific reasoning ability of students between experimental group and controlled group. The samples were 8th grade students of large-sized secondary school in Bangkok. They were selected by purposive sampling technique into two classrooms, which were divided into experimental group of 40 students and controlled group of 38 students. The research instruments were (1) the scientific reasoning ability test with reliability at 0.70 and (2) Socio-scientific Issue based-learning lesson plans and traditional lesson plans. The experimental period was 9 weeks. The collected data were analysed by arithmetic mean, standard deviation, pairedsamples t-test and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results of this study have shown that 1) after the experiment, the students who learned Science through Socio-scientific Issue based-learning had higher mean scores of scientific reasoning ability than before the experiment at .05 level of significance 2) after the experiment, the students who learned science through Socio-scientific Issue based-learning had higher mean scores of scientific reasoning ability than the students who learned Science with traditional instruction at .05 level of significance.