SPIRAL DESIGN OF MICROSCOPE IN BOTH TURKISH SCIENCE CURRICULUM AND TURKISH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM

Abstract

Reflection, refraction, light, mirror and lens are needed terms for effective learning on microscope. It mainly depends on reflection and refraction. Students need to engage such scientific terms before the microscope practices.  Therefore, this study investigates the contents related to the microscope in accordance with spiral curriculum.  For an overall looking to microscope content in Turkish Science Curriculum (TSC), the official documents published by the Ministry of National Education were analyzed at part of reflection, refraction, light, mirror and lens. The contents which were listed in a comparison way used to examine whether there is a parallelism between such related terms or not. It is obvious that the K-level curriculum includes microscope. At 4 grade, students make simple observations using this tool. Each part of microscope are mainly introduced to the children at 6 grade. However it is clear that light and lens are needed contents to understand the microscope at 4 grade, lens is located in TSC at 8 grade. Although light is located in TSC in accordance with the spiral curriculum design, lens has not got a similar scope and sequence as it located in curriculum later than microscope practices. For further learning of such activities, it is absolutely required to be aware of the fact that lens and refraction are important basics for microscope. The result of this study also points out that there is a similar location between TSC and Turkish Science and Technology Curriculum (TSTC) in terms of spiral design of microscope use.