Effects of Formative Assessment in Inquiry-Based Learning on High School Students’ Attitudes towards Physics

Year 2019, Volume: 14 , 89 - 94, 20.09.2019

Simay Koksalan Feral Ogan Bekıroglu

Abstract

This
research study aimed to investigate the effect of formative assessment used in
inquiry-based instruction on 10^th grade students’ attitudes towards
physics. For the study, a quasi-experimental with matching only
pretest-posttest control group research design was adopted. An answer was
searched for the question “Is there a significant difference between the
experimental group students who are exposed to formative assessment in
inquiry-based instruction and the control group students who are not exposed to
formative assessment in inquiry-based learning in terms of their attitudes
towards physics?”. The participants of the study consisted of 41 students in
the 10^th grade of a public high school in the spring semester of
2017-2018 academic years. In this study, “Physics-Related Attitudes Scale” was
used as quantitative data collection tool. These were applied twice as pre-test
and after a five- week treatment period as a post-test to both groups to assess
and compare the effectiveness of formative assessment utilized in physics.
Quantitative data collection tools were found to having of high reliability.
The effect size of the applications (Cohen’s d) were large according to the
calculations. When the data were analyzed, a significant difference was found
between the experimental group and the control group in favor of the
experimental group in the final test of Physics-Related Attitudes Scale. The
statistical results of the study show that formative assessment in
inquiry-based instruction has a positive effect on students' attitudes towards
physics course.

Keywords

Inquiry-based instruction, Formative assessment, Physics education, Attitude

References

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