Science teachers’ perceptions toward discrepant events applied in science education

Abstract

Discrepant events, contrary to previous to be true, are events which has unexpected results used to compare students together with their beliefs and to attract their attention They are used for the purpose of attracting students’ attention, encouraging them to think about a topic, stimulating them to work out a contradictory case by changing usual way of thinking (creating cognitive imbalance) and make them research to find a reasonable explanation, improving their inquiry abilities, helping them to be mentally more qualified in cases of curiosity and the unknown. The aim of this research is to study science teachers’ perceptions of discrepant events and level of awareness. For this purpose, phenomenology, one of the pattern of the qualitative research methodology, is applied in the research. Working group consists of 10 science teachers continuing the profession in Nevsehir Province with varied professional experience during 2014 -2015 academic year. Data related to the research are collected through observation, interview and analyzed in accordance with descriptive and contextual approaches. As a result of data analysis, it is quite obvious that science teachers are familiar with discrepant events, but there has been incompetence in handling of them in practice. To sum up, science teachers’ understanding of discrepant events has reached substantial levels. However, it is clear that they are not qualified enough to decide how to apply discrepant event or which class levels it should be applied.