Determination of the interest levels of secondary school 6-8 grade students towards astronomy

Education is of great importance especially for developed and developing countries. In order to keep up with the developments in the 21st century, it is vital for individuals to develop themselves. The development of societies is only possible with qualified and competent individuals. In order for a nation to have such citizens, it must have a quality education system. For this reason, countries frequently change their education systems and curricula. For example, in order to improve education in Turkey, the education system was changed to 4+4+4 and some changes were made in the science curriculum. With the changes made in the science curriculum in 2018, the subject of astronomy attracted more attention and took place as the first unit in the every class. The study was carried out in three primary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the province of Niğde in the 2020-2021 academic year, and the population of the research was 49 students in 6th grade, 50 students in 7th grade and 342 students in 8th grade. It consists of 441 students. In the research, survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. Within the scope of the study, the 31-item Interest in Astronomy Scale developed by Kılıç Ertaş and Keleş (2017) was applied to the students. According to the findings of the research, students are interested in organizations such as NASA and CERN, although they do not want to study in the field of space sciences and astronomy, they want to go to space and have information about the preparations for going to space; There was a significant difference in favor of the 7th grades; 7th grade students are more interested in astronomy than 6th and 8th grade students; male students were more interested in learning about astronomy and popular astronomy sub-dimension than female students. As a result of the findings obtained, suggestions were made for the variables affecting the interest levels of students in astronomy at the secondary school level. Keywords: Interest in astronomy, Science education, Astronomy, Middle school