The effect of cognitive acceleration strategy on the achievement of second-grade middle school students in geography and the development of scientific thinking

Abstract

The aim of the present research is to investigate the impact of the cognitive acceleration strategy on the achievement of second grade intermediate students and the development of their scientific thinking. To achieve the goal of the research has been formulated three null hypotheses, the experimental method was chosen with two sets of equivalence and post-test for achievement and tests before and after scientific thinking, applied research experiment in the first semester of the academic year (2019-2018). The research sample consisted of (61) students (31) for the experimental group and (30) for the control group, which were randomly selected. The research groups were rewarded with the following variables (the age of the students calculated in months, intelligence, scale of scientific thinking, the level of educational attainment of the parents). Prepared behavioral purposes for the scientific material, which consisted in its final form of (90) behavioral objectives, and in the light of these objectives were prepared (50) teaching plans after confirming its validity to be presented to a group of experts and arbitrators. The researcher prepared two tools for research, the achievement test and the scientific thinking scale, the achievement test consisted of (40) thematic paragraphs of the multiple-choice type with four alternatives. Alpha-Kronbach (0.95) The scale of scientific thinking consisted of (5) skills (identifying the problem, choosing the hypotheses, testing the validity of the hypotheses, interpretation, generalization), and distributed paragraphs to the skills mentioned equally (five paragraphs per skill) four Alternatives, have been updated Validity and psychometric properties were found, and the stability of its paragraphs was found in alpha-Kronbach method (0.88) .After data processing statistically and using statistical bag, the results of the research showed:1-There is a statistically significant difference at the significance level (0.05) between the average scores of the experimental group studying according to the cognitive acceleration strategy and the scores of the control group students who are studying according to the usual method of achievement test in the geography in favor of the average experimental group.2- There is a statistically significant difference at the level of significance (0.05) between the average scores of the experimental group students who study according to the cognitive acceleration strategy and the scores of the control group students who study according to the usual method in the scientific thinking scale in favor of the average of the experimental group.3-There is a statistically significant difference at the level of significance (0.05) between the average scores of students of the experimental group studying according to the strategy of cognitive acceleration before and after the experiment in the scale of scientific thinking in favor of the post-median.Based on these results, the researcher developed a number of conclusions and recommendations and suggested further studies to complement the research.