Development and implementation of a thought experiments attitude scale for science teachers

In this study, the attitudes of science teachers towards thought experiments scale was developed and it was aimed to reveal whether there is a significant difference in the attitudes of science teachers towards thought experiments according to gender and professional seniority variables. The developed scale is a 5-point Likert type attitude scale. In the scale development stages, the steps of literature review, item writing, cognitive interview and expert opinion for the written items were followed respectively. After these stages, a trial form was created and the application was carried out with a total of 657 Science teachers, 423 teachers in the first stage for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and 234 teachers for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), working in public schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the 2022-2023 academic year. SPSS 21 and Mplus package programs were used to reveal the factor structure of the scale. EFA was conducted to determine the factor structure of the scale, CFA was conducted to test the revealed structure, and item analyses were conducted for the scale items. As a result of the analyzes, a unidimensional scale consisting of 16 items was obtained. Internal consistency analyses were conducted within the scope of the reliability study of the scale. As a result of the reliability analyses, Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole scale was calculated as .92 for EFA and .94 for CFA. At the end of the study, a valid and reliable "Thought Experiments Attitude Scale" was developed to determine science teachers' attitudes towards thought experiments. In addition, the attitudes of science teachers towards thought experiments were compared in terms of gender and professional seniority variables and no significant difference was found. It is recommended that the developed Thought Experiments Attitude Scale should be used in future studies for validity and reliability studies for different sample groups and for large-scale studies in which science teachers' attitudes towards thought experiments can be examined in terms of various variables.