Student attıtudes towards hıgh school hıstory course: A scale development and applıcatıon study

The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable attitude scale to determine the attitudes of secondary school students toward history courses and to examine these attitudes in terms of specific variables. The study was conducted on a voluntary basis with 1149 students enrolled in various high school types and grade levels in Bartın province and its districts. To address the purpose of the study, a literature review was conducted, and a 60-item item pool was created by having students write essays expressing their feelings and thoughts about history courses. Based on expert opinions, the scale was converted to a 46-item, 5-point Likert-type structure. After assessing face and content validity, the scale was administered to 458 high school students to test construct validity. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) conducted using SPSS 26 revealed that two items with factor loadings below 0,30 and eight overlapping items were removed from the scale. As a result of EFA, the KMO value was found to be 0,920, the Bartlett test result was found to be significant (p = 0,000), and a scale structure consisting of 3 sub-dimensions and 36 items with an eigenvalue above 1 was obtained. Factor loadings ranged from 0,542 to 0,774 for the "Importance and Enjoyment" sub-dimension, from 0,553 to 0,794 for the "Interest and Aptitude for History" sub-dimension, and from 0,581 to 0,772 for the "Denial" sub-dimension. In order to verify the theoretical structure of the scale, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted with data obtained from 281 different high school students using the AMOS 24 program. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that the three-dimensional structure of the History Course Attitude Scale was confirmed and the goodness of fit index values were χ²/df = 2,18; RMSEA = 0,05; GFI = 0,90; AGFI = 0,88; CFI = 0,92; IFI = 0,92; TLI = 0,90; SRMR = 0,05, and these values were within acceptable ranges. After obtaining a valid scale structure, the scale was administered to 326 students, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of the scale and its subdimensions were examined. Internal consistency coefficients were found to be highly reliable: 0,884 for the History Course Attitude Scale, 0,897 for the "Importance and Pleasure" sub-dimension, high for the "Interest and Tendency to History" sub-dimension, and 0,798 for the "Denial" sub-dimension. High and moderate correlations were found between the scale and its sub-dimensions. Furthermore, statistically significant differences were determined between students' history course attitudes according to book reading frequency, general grade point average, history course score average, and virtual museum experience variables. The study concluded that the History Course Attitude Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used to assess high school students' dispositions toward history. Furthermore, recommendations for educational practices and future research are included in line with the research findings.