Examining the relationship between the patterns of informal problem of secondary school students and their opinions of the nature of science

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between students' views on the nature of science and their informal reasoning patterns. 130 students from the 8th grade of TOBB Yavuz Selim Secondary School in Adıyaman province participated in the study. A 35-item nature of science opinion questionnaire was applied to determine the students' views on the nature of science. In order to determine students' informal reasoning patterns, 2 interview forms containing socioscientific issues were used. One of these topics is related to the subject of gene therapy, which is the 5th subject of the "DNA and Genetic code" unit of the 8th grade science curriculum, in the "application areas of biotechnology", while the second subject is again about the 8th grade science curriculum's "Energy transformations and environmental sciences" It is related to nuclear energy in the unit. The informal patterns of the students are classified as Rational, Emotional, Intuitive and thinking patterns that include multiple thinking patterns. The literature was used to determine these classified patterns. General mean and One-way Anova test were used to compare the research data. The relationship between views on the nature of science and informal reasoning patterns was examined. According to the results, it was concluded that there was no significant difference between views on the nature of science and gene therapy. It was also concluded that there was no significant difference between science, scientist, scientific knowledge and gene therapy, which are the sub-dimensions of the nature of science. It has been concluded that there is no significant difference between views on the nature of science and nuclear energy. It was also concluded that there is no significant difference between science, scientists, scientific knowledge and nuclear energy. Key Words: Socioscientific Issues; The Nature of Science; Scientific Reasoning Skills