Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
European Conference on Educational Research, ECER 2015, Budapest, Macaristan, 8 - 11 Eylül 2015
In order to achieve conceptual integration (CI) among different subject areas in science, students must have enough prior knowledge and promote meaningful learning (diSessa, 1993; Matthews, 1993, Taber, 2005). Therefore, the CI can be defined as the promoting meaningful learning that learners can employ pre-requisite knowledge or concepts in a certain science subject whilst learning a concept or topic in another science subject (Taber, 2003; Toomey & Garafalo, 2003). Likewise, Taber (2005) defined CI as the person’s organized knowledge structures which is formed making connections between different areas. For instance, when teachers teach certain chemistry topics at a more advanced level, they should use more fundamental chemistry topics, ideas, and concepts at a less advanced level and think about some pre-requisite knowledge taken physics or biology topics since learners can learn this topic meaningfully (Taber, 2008). It is important to investigate the CI in terms of eliminating misconceptions (Ganaras, Duman, & Larcher, 2008), providing meaningful learning (Taber, 2005). Moreover, when scientists are dealing with a paradigm, they should look science completely (Lederman, 2007). As the CI requires combining different disciplines, it helps students to behave as a scientist. If science concepts are not integrated with each other properly, students cannot achieve the CI among science concepts. Also, they cannot link between new knowledge and prior learning, facilitate new meaningful learning and reinforce the previous learning. Chemistry, physics, and biology are closely linked domains and needs conceptual integration in order to provide meaningful learning. In this integration, using appropriate instructional strategies and assessment techniques is crucial.