Academician views about the importance of science main concepts in engineering education and its readiness level at secondary schools (İstanbul example)

In this research, it is aimed to determine student readiness level of the concepts that are accepted by the engineering departments' academicians as a basement for their area of specialization. Research sample was comprised of the Higher Education Board certified Universities' Engineering and Architecture Faculties members which are employeed at 2014-2015 academic session in İstanbul. It was used random disproportionate clustering sampling model in the research. 104 academicians from 10 universities attended this research. 6 of the participant academicians work on computer engineering department, 2 of the participant academicians work on biomedical engineering department, 2 of the participant academicians work on maritime transportation engineering department, 11 of the participant academicians work on electrical and electronical engineering department, 18 of the participant academicians work on industrial engineering department, 18 of the participant academicians work on civil engineering department, 3 of the participant academicians work on geology engineering department, 19 of the participant academicians works on chemical engineering department, 2 of the participant academicians work on mine engineering department, 17 of the participant academicians work on mechanical engineering department, 6 of the participant academicians work on metallurgy engineering department. Also, 13 of this participant academicians are Professors, 12 of this participant academicians are Associate Professors, 42 of this participant academicians are Assistant Professors, 42 of this participant academicians are instructors and teaching, researching assistants. In the first phase of this research, 643 science concepts list was determined as looking over the textbooks which are certified by the Ministry of Education Head Council of Education and Morality. Then a workshop was performed with 93 science teachers and it was asked for eliminating the most important science concepts from the list which was determined in previous step. As a result 52 basic science concepts were chosen in the scope of living creatures and life, physical phenomenon, matter and changement, earth and universe learning fields. This 52 concepts were used as the valid questions for the survey. In the second phase of this research, it was asked for the academicians which science concepts are the main concepts for their engineering fields and in the third phase, it was asked how enough the readiness level of the students which are registered to their departments by 3 Point Likert Scale (Enough, Medium , Not Enough). Datas which were collected from the second and third phases were computerized by "IBM SPSS Statistics 15.0" . After entering the datas to the computer, cross tabulation analysis was used for percentage, frequency calculations. Considering all findings, it is understood that academicians clearly state majority of registered students are not enough in terms of readiness level by the main science concepts for their engineering fields. Key words: Science Education, Concept Learning, Student Readiness, Engineering Education, Misconceptions