TO TERMINATE THE CHALLENGES FACED BY SCIENCE TEACHERS IN PRACTICAL WORK

Paywand Jalal Hassan

December, 2016

Practical work and real objects are very significant materials for supporting the science educational process. Today with expanding knowledge and science information practical work is very important for successful science teaching. Consequently, this study was conducted to terminate the challenges faced by science teachers in practical work. It reports to observe the facility of schools in using science laboratory and utilizing science materials in their instruction process. Besides, the study targets to find out the obtainability and capability of laboratory tools in basic schools.

This quantifiable enquiry was conducted with the involvement of science tutors in the KRG basic schools. Furthermore, with the purpose of gather and estimate the essential data an examination questionnaire which consisted of 10 objects was used and 250 science tutors were nominated to take a part in this research. Furthermore, in order to analyze the percentages, standard deviations, means, frequencies, T-test. In addition, SPSS program version 20 was used and the quantifiable data was analyzed descriptively.

The finding results indicate that most basic schools are not provided by laboratory tools and more than half of the participant teachers are facing difficulties in relation to availability to laboratory aids and materials, absence of science training courses, the teachers had the strong desire for to integrate practical work in to their teaching process and several governmental and practical problems still requirement to be solved. Otherwise, the study showed differences among instructors’ opinions on using laboratory according to their year of experiences. Likewise, the survey sheds light on that science educator's attitude toward doing practical work in their teaching process which was very negative due to inaccessibility of laboratory, lab skills, training courses, supporting materials and devices.

Key Words: practical work, science lesson, tutors’ skills, laboratory and basic study.