The Effect of the Flipped Classroom on the Nature of Science (NOS) and Student Achievement in Biology

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, new technologies as an integral part of the educational setting have created unique opportunities for teachers to apply various instructional and teaching methods to better educate students. This paper aimed at investigating the effect of the flipped classroom method on the nature of science (NOS) and achievement. Methods: This was a pretest-posttest semi-experimental study with control group. The population included all tenth grade female students of Tabriz city in the 2017-2018. The sample size consisted of 45 students of tenth grade selected by cluster sampling method in which 23 of them were in the experimental group and 22 of them were in the control group. Data gathering tools in this study included the questionnaire of NOS (Liang et al, 2008) and a teacher made achievement exam in biology course. Data were analyzed using covariance analysis. Results: Results showed that in the whole group comparison, the mean score of achievement in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group (P=0.02). There was no significant difference on effect of flipped classroom on the NOS between two groups (P=0.07). Conclusion: The Flipped Classroom has led to an increase in learning in students, thus it affects their academic development, but it did not affect students’ nature of science.

Keywords

• flipped classroom
• the nature of science
• biology course
• students achievement