SCIENTIFIC EPISTEMOLOGICAL BELIEFS OF PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
İLKÖĞRETİM OKULU ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN BİLİMSEL EPİSTEMOLOJİK İNANÇLARI

Author : Etem YEŞİLYURT
Number of pages : 1587-1609

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine scientific epistemological beliefs of 7th and 8th grade students according to their own reporting. This research is in survey model and descriptive in nature. Participants consist of 324 students attending to7th and 8th grade classrooms of a primary school in Karatay province of Konya during the second term of 2011-2012 academic year. Data for this study have been obtained via Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Inventory developed by Elder (1999) and adapted to Turkish by Acat, Tüken, and Karadağ (2010). Data have been gathered according to volunteerism during the dates of April 25th and 27th 2012. The inventory has been applied to students during counseling course time and the application has taken about 8 minutes per child. SPSS 16.0 software has been used for data analysis. Data have been analyzed by the way of frequencies, percentages, arithmetic average, standard deviation, independent sample t-test and one-way anova. As a result of this study, it is revealed that primary school students’ scientific epistemological beliefs are at moderate level on the factor of authority and honesty, at very high level on the factor of process of knowledge production, at moderate level on the factor of resource of knowledge, at very high level on the factor of intelligence, and above the average on the factor of mutative knowledge. A significant difference is found in students’ scientific epistemological belief level with respect to the variables of gender and academic achievement. However, in terms of grade level, no significant difference is found in students’ belief level on any factors of the scientific epistemology.

Keywords

Science, Scientific Epistemological Beliefs, Primary School Students.

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