Improving Science Process Skills of Students: A Review of Literature

Abstract

This paper aims to review and assess the strategies available in literature to improve the practices of science process skills (SPS) among students. SPS encompasses the mental and physical activities of students in collecting and organizing information and then using the information to make predictions, explain phenomena, solve problems, understand the scientific endeavor, and learn science. Students were required to develop and use these skills in the teaching and learning process. The commonly identified and described SPS are observation, measuring, classifying, communicating, predicting, inferring, using numbers, using space/time relationship, questioning, identifying and controlling variables, hypothesizing, defining operationally, designing experiments, interpreting data, and modeling. These skills are important for students as tools for exploration and investigation of the natural world, improving academic achievements and attitudes towards science, learning science with understanding, and promoting development of mental and intellectual processes. From the literature reviewed the following strategies were recognized for the development of SPS in students: integration of SPS in curriculum materials, classroom lessons and assessments, use of instructional strategies or methods, and providing explicit instruction or training on SPS. The instructional strategies identified for enhancing SPS were student-centered teaching methods and multiple representation approaches. Student-centered teaching approaches promote the development of SPS in students by engaging them in mind-on and hand-on activities. Multiple representation approaches involve presenting lessons by using a combination of various teaching methods or various media in the same lesson and are found important for SPS development in students. Therefore, it was recommended to use these strategies for developing SPS to attain science education goals.