Abstract:

The purpose of this reseach is to indicate pre-service primary teachers’ competence related to science and pseudoscience distinction, and to detemine whether it differs or not in terms of gender and class level variables. In this reseach, scanning model which is one of the quantitative research models was utilised. The sampling of the research consisted of 230 pre-service primary teachers enrolled at the department of Primary Education in Faculty of Education at a state university in the Black Sea region of Turkey in 2019-2020 academic year. “The science – pseudoscience distinction scale” which was adapted to Turkish by Kirman Çetinkaya, Laçin Şimşek and Çalışkan (2013) was utilised to gather data. Because data were not normally distributed, they were analysed in terms of both sub-dimension and overall scale by using Mann Whitney U Test for the comparisons of a different group and Kruskal Wallis H Test for the comparisons of more than two groups. According to the findings of the research, it was detected that pre-service primary teachers had a high level of competence in making a distinction between science and pseudoscience. There was a significant difference in favour of men between pre-service primary teachers’ gender variable and science-pseudoscience distinction. Besides, there was a significant difference in favour of the 2nd grades between pre-service primary teachers’ class level variable and science-pseudoscience distinction. Especially, 2nd grades in making a distinction between science and pseudoscience had higher averages than the other grade levels. It can be caused that they took applied lessons and lessons increasing scientific competence more this year. It is considered that the results of the research will guide the researchers who are interested in the subject.

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