Developing science lesson-focused student responsibility scale and determining elementary school students' responsibility levels

This study aims to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool that may determine the responsibility levels of primary school third and fourth-grade students focused on science lessons and to examine the responsibility levels of the students in terms of various demographic variables with the developed scale. This study that has adopted a quantitative research design, a descriptive scanning model, one of the general scanning models, was used. The research was conducted with the participation of 1575 students in primary schools in three central districts in Kayseri province in the 2018-2019 academic year. As a result of the validity-reliability analysis of the data collection tool developed by adopting a Likert-type scale development model in the study, a 17-item scale structure with Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient .87, consisting of 4 factors, was obtained, which explains 50.83% of the total variance. With the developed scale, the responsibility levels of third and fourth-grade primary school students were examined in terms of various demographic variables. According to the research findings the science lesson-oriented responsibility levels of primary school 3rd and 4th grade students differ significantly in favor of female students by gender, in favor of third grade students according to grade level, and in favor of "those who love the lesson" according to their level of interest in science. However, students' science lesson-oriented responsibility levels did not differ significantly in terms of birth order, number of siblings, pre-school education status, mother's education level and father's education level.