Journal of Theory and Practice in Education

Abstract

Providing proper facilites to the individuals during the process of learning has an important part for practicing the project activities. The student projects competition administered by the Ministry of National Education (MNE) is an interesting example of a Project Based Learning (PBL). These kinds of applications are required for giving sufficient chance to the individuals since they can have more relations with the curricular knowledge than extra-curricular knowledge. The projects carried out in the competition administered by MNE for six years are important at this viewpoit. Extra-curricular knowledge in projects is needed to be convenient with Science and Technology Curriculum (TSTC). For this reason, students and teachers need to be sensetive to select the extra-curricular content. In this study, 389 student science projects ranked in the top 100 during the period of 2006 and 2011 were analsed using a qualitative research method known as content alysis to find extra-curricular chemical knowledge. With the evaluation of the data, it is concluded that the extra-curicular chemical knowledge has been used in projects widely. The extra-curricular chemistry knowledge at the high school level is an important problem in terms of the equal opportunities in education and respect for the individual as well. Projects with extra-curricular content help students bring science and real life together if the teachers and parents pay attention to the convenient and inconvenient concepts in the TSTC.