Experiences of Multilingual 6th Grade Students with Context-Based Teaching Activities in the Science Classroom

Year 2025, Volume: 9 Issue: 19, 38 - 57

Fatima Mohammad Mukadder Baran

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the experiences of multilingual 6th grade pupils with the context-based learning method. To serve the purpose of the study, activities were organized with the help of scenarios that included situations from the students' real lives, these activities were observed by audio recordings, and interviews were conducted with the pupils at the end of the activities. The data obtained were analyzed using the method of content analysis. As a result of these analyses, it was found that multilingual pupils used scientific questions under the context-based learning environment, were engaged, felt a sense of belonging, the context-based learning method contributed to group work, improved their writing skills, and the use of concepts used in everyday life had a positive effect on students' participation. Context-based learning can have a positive effect on the sense of relevance by taking the relationship between science and everyday life as a basis. Despite this, half of the pupils did not perceive everyday situations as a motivating reason to participate. The results showed, though, that students still participated because of their interest in the pedagogical methods used, such as writing, and group work, as well as critical thinking and discussion tasks. It can be said that these factors increased motivation to participate and it can also indicate the importance of teaching methods being adapted to support different ways of participating and motivating multilingual pupils.

Keywords

Context-based teaching, multilingual pupils, science

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