Date

2006

Author

Çelikdemir, Meliha

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The aim of this study is to investigate the elementary school students’ understandings of the nature of science (NOS). A total of 1949 students (1026 sixth graders and 923 eighth graders) from six different elementary schools participated in the study. “Nature of Science Questionnaire for Elementary Level (E-NOS)” questionnaire, adapted from Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) developed by Aikenhead, Fleming and Ryan (1989) and Views on Nature of Science (VNOS-D) constructed by Lederman, Adb-El-Khalick, Bell and Schwartz (2002), was used to assess the students’ views on the NOS. E-NOS consisted of eleven items that examined the students’ views on seven constructs concerning the NOS, namely tentativeness, subjectivity and creativity of scientific knowledge, social and cultural embeddedness of science, the role of observations and inferences, theories and laws and uncertainty in developing science. Additionally, the definitions of science, the difference of science from the other disciplines and scientific approach in scientific investigations were examined. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted by twelve volunteer students (7 sixth and 5 eighth graders) to investigate the students’ views on nature of science in depth. Data were analyzed both frequency and Chi-squire analyses. Results of this study revealed that the majority of Turkish elementary school students held traditional views on some aspects of the nature of science. According to these results, it was especially notable that the largest group of the students was not aware of the fact that scientific theories and laws are different kinds of scientific knowledge. In addition, many of the students had the idea that there is certain and defined scientific method in order to develop scientific knowledge. It was also found that more 8th grade students held contemporary (realistic) views of the tentative and subjective nature of science and the role of precision and uncertainty in science and more 6th graders had contemporary views on the role of observations and inferences in science. Furthermore, it was indicated that more female students than males possessed contemporary views on the subjectivity and creativity of the nature of science. Chi-square statistics also displayed that there are statistically significant differences in distributions of the students’ responses on all aspects of the nature of science with respect to grade level. In addition, it was found that there are statistically significant differences in distributions of the students’ responses on the subjective nature of scientific knowledge, social and cultural embeddedness of the scientific knowledge, creativity and the role of prediction and uncertainty in science and scientific approach to investigations in science with respect to gender.

Subject Keywords

Elementary or Public School Education.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12607575/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/16041

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis