COMPUTER BASED VISUALIZATION AS STIMULATION INSTRUMENT OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN SCIENCE EDUCATION: THE RESULTS OF PILOT RESEARCH

It is very important for science education to have perfectly prepared aids that could show invisible phenomena and could foster deeper motivation. Also, visualization as a learning and teaching tool could stimulate the perception. This leads to the opinion that represented objects could be shown in the classroom as essential part of education and its organization. Visualization in science as an essential teaching/learning tool has become of great importance nowadays because the technological progress is raising high requirements for education. Problem question – whether computer based visualization stimulates cognitive processes and what exact processes it activate? Research methods: analysis of information resources, questioning, qualitative method. Research methodology: model of genetic structural intellect, the theory of dual code, visual thinking theory. Participants of the research. 209 schoolchildren from secondary schools participated in the research. Random sampling was chosen when schoolchildren in grades 9 and 10 had a possibility to participate in the research. The research instrument, a questionnaire with open-ended and closed questions, was designed. There were 209 schoolchildren (92 schoolchildren from grade 9, 107 – from grade 10) in the sample. The respondents were about 14–17 years of age (2 schoolchildren–14 years old, 73 schoolchildren–15 years old, 111 schoolchildren–16 years old and 23 schoolchildren–17 years old). The respondents' distribution by gender: 72 girls and 45 boys of grade 10, 45 girls and 47 boys of grade 9. The results. Computer based visualization makes easier perception processes because it activates perception operations. Views in the screen help to compare details in visual form and to distinguish the main features. Also it helps to see objects in the whole objects and other things connected with them. All these facts help students to perceive visual information and to understand verbal one too. The results of the research enclose that computer based visualization help to memorize information. It is already known that it is easier to remember visual information and computer screen makes qualitative effect to the memory. At least, students reflect that computer based visualization helps to imagine things that are very abstract or diffi-cult. According to students they are able to create images and mental models about phenomena when they see some similar analogs in the screen. To sum up, there could be done a prediction that computer based visualization could foster deeper work of perception, memory and imagination.