Research on anxiety of secondary school 8th grade students on science

Students' anxiety to science lessons arises from many reasons, including bad experiences in science lessons, lack of role-models, science anxiety of teachers in primary and secondary schools, gender and racial prejudices, and stereotyping of scientists in popular media. Students' concerns about science may be caused by the environment, school or family. Due to the fact that the learning process is seen as inherited, students with parents who have more knowledge in science are thought to be more successful than others. In addition, many situations such as the expectation that the success levels of female students in science will be lower than boys, the idea that students will not be able to solve problems related to science or pass science exams, cause pressure anxiety in students. In this context, the study examining the anxiety levels of middle school 8th grade students for science class was conducted with 335 middle school 8th grade students studying in public and private schools in Ankara and Ağrı in the 2019-2020 academic year. Independent t-test and One Way ANOVA tests were used for the data obtained in the research. The research was carried out by scanning method, which is the sub-branch of descriptive research model. In the research, Science Anxiety Scale was used as a data collection tool. The function of the scale, which consists of one dimension, is to measure students' anxiety levels in general. As a result of the research, it was observed that the students with low average anxiety levels were higher than those who had high average. In addition, it was determined that the anxiety levels of the students who help the students to study in the family differ, and the anxiety levels of the students who have low educational status of the person who helps in the study in the family are different. As a difference, the last finding is that the anxiety levels of the students studying in public and village schools are higher than those studying in private schools Keywords: Anxiety, exam anxiety, science