The investigation of the relationships between attitudes of the 11th grade students towards history lesson and their patriotic attitudes

The purpose of this study is to investigate relationships between attitudes of the 11th grade students towards history lesson and their patriotic attitudes.Sample of the study was chosen randomly from the pool of 3 secondary schools in Kazan district of Ankara province as 3 schools in the academic year of 2009-2010. Totally 240 students, 131 female and 109 male from 11th grades of these 3 schools participated to the studyIn order to gather data, Attitude Toward History Lesson Scale and Patriotic Attitudes Scale were used as measurement instruments. For the analysis of the data, Pearson, Kendall?s tau-b correlation coefficient, t test, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis and one-way ANOVA was used. Significance level is .05 for all the analyses.Findings of the study show that there are medium level positive and significant correlation between students? attitudes toward history lesson and their constructive patriotic attitudes. Besides low level positive and significant correlation was detected between students? attitudes toward history lesson and their blind patriotic attitudes.As to students? blind and constructive patriotic attitudes, the results revealed that the students in this study group have high level constructive and medium level blind patriotic attitudes. On the other hand gender differences were found in terms of neither constructive patriotic attitudes nor blind patriotic attitudes. However according to school type variable, there is a significant difference among students? constructive patriotic attitudes.When the students?attitudes toward history in this study group is taken into consideration, They have high level positive attitude toward history. In terms of gender, it has been seen that male students? attitudes significantly higher positive than female students toward history lesson. But it has not been seen that the students? attitudes towards history significantly differentiated in terms of chosen study field (Literature-Mathematics, Social Science and Science)