Turkish children's attitudes to socioscientific issues

dahasobra doldurSocioscientific issues are the ones that fed by the society and also nourish the society in which they involved. They enable to produce, discuss and beside create innovations that will distinguish the era they involved in from the other eras. Influencing people of all ages, being open to different ideas, and containing issues that affect our lives are among the features that distinguish socioscientific issues from the others. However, in the completed national and international literature studies, it was frequently found that those studies on socioscientific issues were studied on teacher candidates. The scarcity of studies on students studying at primary school level was another determining factor of this study. In this study, it was aimed to determine the attitudes of Turkish children towards socioscientific issues. Factors that can be effective in determining attitudes; students' grade levels, genders, school type, parental education status, interest in science and participation in group work were determined as sub-problems so the data were collected in accordance with that purpose and analyzed. Descriptive analysis which is one of the quantitative research methods was used in the research. 336 students consisting of 3rd and 4th grade students studying in selected private and public primary schools in Meram and Karatay districts of Konya province participated in the research. The data collection process took place in the first half of the 2022-2023 academic years. In this process, data were collected by applying "Personal Information Forms" and "Children's Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues Scale". T-test and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used in the analysis of independent samples in the obtained data. As a result of the analysis of the obtained data, it was seen that the gender of the students, their grade level did not create significant differences in the attitudes of the students towards socioscientific issues. However, it was concluded that the type of school the students attended and the differences in the educational status of the parents of the students showed a determinative difference in the students' attitudes towards socioscientific issues. In addition, it was seen that students' interest in science and their participation in classroom discussions on topics prepared for that purpose had a significant effect on students' attitudes towards socioscientific issues. The obtained results are discussed under the literature and the suggestions that will contribute to the literature are presented.ulacaktır