A significant difference was determined in favor of post-test scores between the pre-test and post-test scores of the attitudes of elementary students towards the science course (t= .007 p< .05). It may be said that the attitudes of first grade elementary students towards the science course develop positively.
This finding demonstrates parallelism with the views of prospective teachers and elementary students on concept cartoons in the study of Keogh and Naylor (2000) titled “Teacher and Learning in Science Using ConceptCartoons: Why Dennis Wants to Stay in at Playtime?” Keogh and Naylor emphasize
especially the positive effects of the use of concept cartoons in their studies. The views of teachers participating in the study are as follows: “They are really very helpful in revealing children’s views; they are very successful to help children explain their own views especially the children who refrain from explaining their own views, it is observed that the children participate in lessons actively and that they are highly-motivated.” Similarly, it also shows parallelism with the finding of “increasing interest in lessons” obtained in Özalp’s (2006) study and with the findings that the cartoons affect learning positively and provide motivation, and make the lesson more interesting in Cengizhan’s (2011) research. Again similarly, (Oluk and Özalp, 2007) in their studies concluded that concept cartoons increased the interest of students in science courses and that they made their learning easier and that they made the lessons more entertaining. This judgment was also supported by student feedbacks: “To tell you the truth, I usually do not like science courses but this time it was quite fine...”, “I liked the lesson very much with the contributions of cartoons, they make the boring lesson more entertaining and the pictures were funny…”, “I started to like this”, “This is a different method and we applied this for the first time; it was really so entertaining and we never got bored of the lesson and it was really great pleasure for me to work with my friends…
Kuşakçı (2007), who examined the effect of concept cartoons on attitudes, had interviews with the teachers and the students in his study regarding the use of concept cartoons in science education. As a result of quantitative analyses, a significant difference between the attitudes of students in the test group and that of students in the control group for the science course was not observed; however, the teachers and students in the test group stated positive views on concept cartoons. The teacher in the test group stated that the cartoons were useful for the students. The students expressed that they liked the lessons covered through concept cartoons more and that they learned easily and what they learnt were permanent.