Abstract:

This research was conducted to examine the attitudes towards science course of secondary school students and to offer a suggestion for improving their level of attitude by investigating whether there is a significant difference between the scores of attitude towards science course with respect to the variables such as gender of the teacher, student age, frequency of laboratory use, science course success score, liking science teacher, the presence of a study room at home, the presence of a computer at home, internet usage status, the serving duration of the teacher, usage frequency of technological applications, type of teaching material, participation in a scientific activity, reading books about science and watching science-related publications. A survey model is used in the research. It employs cross-sectional survey model. The research was conducted on 1780 students from the twelve public secondary schools in Ankara City along the second term in the academic year of 2015-2016. “The Attitudes towards Science Course Scale” was used as data collection tool. Independent Samples t-Test, One-Way ANOVA, Pearson Correlation Coefficient were used to analyze for the data. As a result of the study, it was determined that gender of the teacher, the presence of a study room at home, the presence of a computer at home and the serving duration of the teacher variables were not statistically significant on attitude levels. Furthermore, it was concluded that frequency of laboratory use, science course success score, liking science teacher, internet usage status, usage frequency of technological applications, type of teaching material, participation in a scientific activity, reading books about science and watching science-related publications variables were statistically significant on attitude level. Furthermore, it was determined that secondary school students had a significant decrease in their attitudes toward science courses from 10th to 14th age.

Keywords: