A study of the nature of science belief of teachers visiting science centers

Science education has played a key role in reflecting advances in science and technology to the progress of society. The most important task of science education in this context is to raise individuals as scientific literate or science literate. It can be said that the central components of scientific literacy are "nature of science" and "understanding scientific knowledge". It is emphasized in the literature that understanding the nature of science is seen as an "absolute need" in science education. During the literature review, it was seen that many studies were conducted to reveal the opinions of teachers, teacher candidates and students on the nature of science. It has been determined that there is a limited number of studies on how to effectively reflect the nature of science in out-of-school settings. Considering that beliefs in the nature of science are necessary in achieving science literacy and the contribution of out-of-school learning environments to science education, it is thought that it will be useful to examine and examine teachers' beliefs about the nature of science separately. It is thought that determination of beliefs about the nature of science will contribute to the literature in terms of providing a research opportunity on whether there is a difference in beliefs about the nature of science in terms of considering informal learning environments. The purpose of this study is to determine the nature of science beliefs of teachers who come to visit the science center, which is one of the out-of-school learning environments, by using a measurement tool. For this purpose, the types of scales that were thought of in Turkish and created an item pool for the nature of science were first investigated in the light of the relevant literature and then the measurement tools developed in different cultures. After reviewing the relevant literature, the "Nature of Science Beliefs Scale", which was developed by Özcan and Turgut (2014) by taking opinions from experts and performing validity and reliability analyzes with a series of statistical processes, was used as a data collection tool. This 5-point Likert scale consisting of 37 items in 7 different dimensions was applied to 304 teachers (222 female and 82 male) who visited Feza Gürsey Science Center in Ankara. The data obtained in the results of this study showed that when the relevant values of the teachers who participated in the study were evaluated in terms of knowledgeable / realistic view, the teachers who visited the science center reached an average score of over 3.40 in 2 factors on the BDIO scale, therefore the beliefs of the nature of science in the factors of "scientific knowledge change" and "acceptance and limits of science". He showed that he was at a "knowledgeable" level. The teachers reached average scores between 2.60 and 3.39 on the whole scale and 5 factors, and it was observed that teachers' beliefs in the nature of science were at an "acceptable" / traditional level both in general and in these factors. In addition, the beliefs of the teachers who came to the science center in terms of gender, professional seniority, type of school and branch variables were examined. As a result of the study, when it was examined in terms of demographic information, it was determined that there was a statistically significant difference according to the gender variable in the BDIO scores and only the " scientific knowledge change " sub-factor. It has been determined that this differentiation is also in favor of women. According to the branch variable; In the " scientific knowledge change " factor, in favor of numerical teachers, in the "creativity and imagination" factor, in the "creativity and magination" factor, in the "creativity and imagination" factor, in favor of teachers who take oral lessons in favor of oral lessons. It has been determined that there is a differentiation between the teachers who teach and those who take the skill courses in favor of the teachers who take the verbal class. Considering the results, suggestions have been made in order to benefit both the literature, teachers and students.