The effects of activity-based astronomy education on pre-service science teachers' attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of activity-based astronomy education on pre-service science teachers' attitudes toward astronomy and self-efficacy beliefs toward astronomy teaching. The research was carried out with 45 pre-service science teachers who were seniors at Faculty Education in public university. In the study single group pre-test and post-test experimental design was used as a research method. In the study, in order to measure pre-service science teachers' attitudes towards astronomy, "Astronomy Attitude Scale" developed by Türk and Kalkan (2017), which is a 18-item and five-point Likert type scale, was used and in order to measure their self-efficacy beliefs toward astronomy teaching, "The Astronomy Subjects Teaching Self-Efficacy Belief Scale" developed by Demirci (2017), which is a 13-item and five-point Likert type scale, was used. The scales were administered before and after the 10-week activity-based astronomy teaching program to pre-service science teachers. The data obtained from the study were analyzed with SPSS 22.0 program. In order to determine the test technique to be applied in the analysis of data, the normality test was performed and the dependent sample t test was chosen for the analysis. According to the findings of the study, there was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of the pre-service science teachers' attitudes toward astronomy and between pre-test and post-test scores of pre-service science teachers' self-efficacy beliefs toward astronomy teaching as a result of the activity-based astronomy teaching program. It could be concluded that using the activity-based astronomy teaching program was an effective way to improve pre-service science teachers' attitudes toward astronomy and self-efficacy beliefs toward astronomy teaching. Key Words: Astronomy Education, Pre-Service Science Teachers, Attitude, Self-Efficacy