Investigation of science teachers' professional and scientific attitudes: Tokat sample

At this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the attitudes of science teachers working in the Tokat province, towards their profession and their scientific attitudes. For this purpose, relational survey model was used among the survey studies based on quantitative approach. Data were collected from the science teachers working in middle schools in Tokat city center and its districts (Turhal, Pazar, Erbaa, Artova, Zile, Niksar, Almus, Yesilyurt, Sulusaray, Reşadiye). A total of 174 science teachers, including 91 females and 83 males, participated in the study, which was carried out voluntarily. Participants ages ranged between 24 to 62; and their professional experience ranged from 1 to 38 years. At the research; The Demographic Information Form, which was developed by the researcher, Attitudes towards Teaching Profession Scale , which was developed by Fatma Nezihe Özgür (1994), and Scientific Attitudes Scale, which was developed by Moore and Foy (1997) and adapted to Turkish by Demirbaş and Yağbasan (2006) were used as data collection tools. First of all, the content analysis method was used in the qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions in the Demographic Information Form, and the answers of the participants were divided into codes and the frequencies of the codes were reported. For the descriptive analyses of the quantitative data obtained from the scales, means, standard deviations, and minimum and maximum values were calculated. Pearson product correlation coefficients were interpreted for the relationships between variables. Independent samples t-Test was used to test whether dependent variables differed by gender. Finally, one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) was performed to make multiple comparisons of dependent variables according to professional experience. As a result of the descriptive analysis, it was found that the attitudes of the participants towards the teaching profession were high considering meanvalueand they had a positive attitude towards their profession. On the other hand, level of their scientific attitudes were found to be medium considering total scores. When the correlation between the attitudes of science teachers towards the teaching profession and the total score of their scientific attitudes were examined, it was seen that there was a significant positive and medium level correlation between the two variables. In addition, when the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the Scientific Attitude Scale and the attitudes of the teachers towards their profession was examined, a small positive relation was seen between the attitude towards the teaching profession and the four sub-dimensions. When the correlation values of the sub-dimensions of the scientific attitude scale were examined, the greatest relation was found between the "the place and importance of science in society" and "demonstrating scientific behaviorsub-dimensions, as positive and medium level.Similarly, a middlelevel and positive relationship was also found between the dimensions of "demonstrating scientific behavior" and "the structure of science and approach to events". The lowest significant relation was determined between the dimensions of "the structure and purpose of science" and "the structure of scientific laws and theories". When it was examined whether the attitudes of the participants towards their professions differed according to gender, it was seen that the attitudes of female teachers towards teaching profession were more positive than male teachers. When the gender variable for scientific attitude was examined, it was determined that there was no difference between female teachers and male teachers. Looking at the sub-dimensions, it was seen that the scientific attitude of male teachers towards "demonstrating scientific behavior" dimension was more positive than the female teachers. When the professional attitudes of the participants according to their professional experience were examined, a statistically significant difference was found. When it examined whether the scientific attitudes differed according to professional experience, there was a statistically significant difference for "demonstrating scientific behavior" sub-dimension and total scientific attitude score. When the demographic characteristics of the teachers were examined, for the participants' reasons of the vocational choice, it was seen that the intrinsic features such as "loving their profession, loving children" had a majority. It was found out that the participants had high ratio of in-service training. It was seen that the majority of the participants followed scientific publications. The studies examining the relationship between science teachers' attitudes towards their profession and their scientific attitudes were very few in the literature. In order to compare the results of the present study, more studies on the topic are required.