The effect of CKCM-oriented instruction on Grade 8 students’ conceptual understanding of sustainable development

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to facilitate grade 8 students’ conceptual understanding of ‘sustainable development (SD)’ via Common Knowledge Construction Model (CKCM)-oriented instruction. Through a pre-experimental research approach, the study was conducted with 31 grade 8 students drawn from a secondary school in the city of Trabzon, Turkey. A word association test (WAT), a conceptual understanding test (CUT) and student worksheets were used to unveil their conceptual understanding of SD (i.e. sustainability, recycling, saving, technology, environment, and the technology-environment-sustainability cycle). In analysing data, grade 8 students’ responses to the WAT and CUT were imported into SPSS 22.0^TM to run a paired samples t-test. Further, their responses to each worksheet were exposed to content analysis via three criteria: Positive Relational Development, Negative Relational Development and No Change. The current study revealed that the CKCM-oriented instruction was effective in enhancing grade 8 students’ conceptual understanding of SD and challenging their alternative conceptions. In light of the results, the current study recommends that teachers and science educators develop similar teaching designs for other science topics.

KEYWORDS:

• Common knowledge construction model
• conceptual understanding
• science education
• sustainable development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the educational sciences ethics committee in Trabzon University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Additional information

Funding

This study was not funded by any institution.