Primary school students` attitudes toward science courses

iiiABSTRACTPrimary School Students? Attitudes toward Science CoursesAkın ALKANPrimary EducationElementary EducationAfyon Kocatepe UniversitySocial Sciences InstituteSeptember, 2006Advisor : Asst. Prof. Dr. Lütfullah TÜRKMENThe purpose of this study was to reveal the attitudes of 4th and 5th grade primaryschool students toward science course. The sample of this study was 832 studentsselected with the stratified sampling method from the primary schools located in theprovince of Uşak. 24 items open-ended attitude scale with 0.82 reliability coefficientwas prepared to measure the attitudes of 4th and 5th grade students toward sciencecourse. Descriptive statistics and three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) wereemployed to analyze the data of study. In the result, students have positive attitudestoward science courses but only in one sub-scale students have negative attitudestoward the nature of science. While the gender, grade levels and some socio-economicfactors of students do not indicate significant difference at the base of the attitudestoward science courses, the students having better socio-economic conditions havehigher positive attitudes than those of students not having. Students who have bettergrades in science courses have significantly higher attitudes toward science courses thanthose of students having low grades in science courses.Key Words: Science Education, Attitudes, Primary Education