AÇIK HAVADA MOBİL BİLİŞSEL GÖREVLERİN ÖĞRETMEN ADAYLARINDA BİTKİ TANIMA PERFORMANSI VE MOTİVASYONA ETKİSİ

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of different cognitive tasks designed in outdoor and mobile environments on biology pre-service teachers’ plant identification performance and task-specific situational motivation. The study was conducted using a repeated measures design. The study group consisted of 21 pre-service biology teachers enrolled in the biology teacher education program at a public university in Ankara, Türkiye. During the research process, outdoor mobile cognitive tasks based on interpretation, inference, and decision-making skills were developed and implemented through the Actionbound application. In the data collection process, participants’ task performances were evaluated through the responses obtained via Actionbound. Task-specific situational motivation levels were measured using the Current Motivation Questionnaire, originally shortened by Freund et al. (2011) and adapted into Turkish by Akpınarlı and Köseoğlu (2026). The findings revealed that biology pre-service teachers’ plant identification performance differed significantly according to the type of cognitive task (F(2, 40)=16.632, p< .001, η²ₚ=.454). In contrast, no significant difference was found in task-specific situational motivation levels across task types (F(2, 40)=1.760, p= .185, η²ₚ =.081). The findings indicated that interpretation tasks, in particular, provided an effective instructional approach for supporting plant identification performance and developing higher-order thinking skills in botany education. Accordingly, it is recommended that outdoor mobile cognitive tasks be integrated into botany education as pedagogical approaches that support the development of sustainability awareness, ecological awareness, and sensitivity toward plant diversity among pre-service teachers.