Science is a human construct and a human activity. Children are naturally curious. Their curiosity motivates them to discover new ways to use their powerful key for unlocking the mysteries of their world. Therefore, when we consider what science is and make decisions about what to teach children and how to teach them, three parts of science (attitudes, skills and knowledge) what science is actually, must be remembered and put to use. In other words, every child constructs and reconstructs knowledge progressively on his own using the science processes, which is the philosophy of teaching-learning process which is the essence of Constructivism. This book is the outcome of the research work carried out by the author to study the effectiveness of constructivist approach on science achievement and science processes like perception of nature of science, scientific attitude and science process skills.
The book discusses philosophical, psychological and pedagogical bases of constructivism, emphasizing various faces of constructivism and constructivism in science teaching. It presents the insights from the review of related literature which helped in the conduct of the study. Methodology of the study including procedural details like design, sampling procedure, development of the tools and the teaching learning process using constructivist principles are also presented. It also enlightens about both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data collected. The study resulted with an empirical evidence for the effectiveness of constructivist approach on achievement in science, perception of nature of science, scientific attitude and science process skills among secondary school students. Teacher trainees, teacher educators and researchers would be most benefited from this study.