Development of Science Sandbox Enhancing Soft Skills of Junior High School Students

Abstract

This research aims to develop a Science Sandbox to enhance the soft skills of junior high school students. The research process consists of two steps: 1) The development of the Science Sandbox, which involves synthesizing information to generate concepts for developing the Sandbox. The synthesized information is then used to define the content scope, leading to the development of the Science Sandbox, with a data synthesis recording form as the research tool; and 2) The evaluation and trial use. The developed Science Sandbox is regulated with 5 experts used the index of item-objective congruence (IOC), then tried out with the target group of 6 students from the lower secondary level (grades 7-9) at Sura Nari Witthaya School through purposive sampling. The research tools were the Science Sandbox documents for students, and a soft skills assessment tool. The study found that each set of Science Sandbox includes a section that provides basic knowledge to students and a section that students need to learn to create knowledge on their own. The evaluation results of the developed Science Sandbox showed that the developed Science Sandbox was consistent and appropriate, making it suitable for promoting soft skills among junior high school students.