Examination of mental qualities and attitudes on 8th grade students to socio-scientific topics

Examination of mental qualities and attitudes on 8th grade students to socio-scientific topics is aimed in this study. The study is run on 136 8th grade students studied in 2018-2019 education year in 8 different public schools located at Kangal county of Sivas province. Quantitative and qualitative data acquisition and analyze methods are used together in this study aiming to determine mental qualities and attitudes on secondary school students to socio-scientific topics. Therefore, it is created as a mixed research design. "Attitude Scale on Socio-Scientific Topics" is used as a quantitative data acquisition, on the other hand Word Association Test (WAT) that is developed by researchers and associated to socio-scientific topics. According to findings after quantitative analyses based on factorial ANOVA (analysis of variance) test; it is determined that overall attitudes and importance sub-dimension are positive on 8th grade students to socio-scientific subjects, on the other hand enjoyment and concern sub-dimensions are neither positive nor negative. It is also determined that gender of 8th grades doesn't create a difference at overall attitudes and enjoyment, concern and importance sub-dimensions on socio-scientific topics. According to another finding; it is determined that educational background of students' mothers doesn't make a significant difference at overall attitudes and enjoyment, concern and importance sub-dimensions on socio-scientific topics. It is also determined that education background of students' fathers doesn't make a significant difference at overall attitudes and enjoyment and importance sub-dimensions on socio-scientific topics. Yet, concern sub-dimension is significantly different depending on fathers' occupation. Qualitative analyzes are run on students by a word association test created with eight notions related to socio-scientific topics. A frequency table is created based on data collected by the test. Notion nets are created demonstrating cognitive qualities of students based on the frequency table. Data is analyzed and interpreted according to relations come out of notion nets. Students associated organ donation (932) and global warming (848) at most; and associated stem cell (555) and cloning (625) at least according to result of the study. Importance of socio-scientific topics are remarked and suggestions are made to program creators, researchers and appliers about teaching of socio-scientific topics according to findings in study. Keywords: Socio-scientific Topics, Attitude, Secondary School Students, Word Association Test