STUDENTS' SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS, LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND ATTITUDE IN A THERMODYNAMIC LABORATORY THROUGH SCAFFOLDED INSTRUCTION

Teaching science entails more than just imparting scientific knowledge; teachers must create an appropriate learning environment to increase student interest while developing skills that can be applied in real-life situations. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to determine the extent and relationship of students' science process skills, learning environment, and attitude in a thermodynamics laboratory through scaffolded instruction. A descriptive correlational research design was used in this study. To gather the data, eighty (80) third-year science education students were chosen using total enumeration sampling and given two adapted questionnaires. The study's findings revealed that students' science process skills were moderately practiced, and a favorable learning environment was also moderately practiced in a thermodynamics laboratory under scaffolded instruction. Likewise, a positive attitude toward inquiry and enjoyment was found. Finally, the null hypothesis was rejected because there is a significant relationship between students' science process skills, learning environment, and attitude. This implies that mastering science process skills and improving the learning environment in a thermodynamic laboratory would increase student interest in the subject matter. As a result, the study recommends that instructors may foster a conducive learning environment and develop students' science process skills to improve students' attitude towards the course. To fully explore the effectiveness of scaffolded instruction, the study also suggests implementing the "I do, we do, you do" strategy to learners in a different field of study and compare the students’ pre and post-test scores.