Examination of Elementary School Students’ Scientific Attitudes and Intellectual Risk Taking Behaviours

Abstract

Science Education International ¦ Volume 32 ¦ Issue 2 149 ORIGINAL ARTICLE INTRODUCTION Science classes in elementary schools should seek to enable students to engage in scientific thinking, encourage them to perform work on basic sciences, and positively develop their attitudes toward science classes with a positive educational environment. Studies related to both the healthy construction of classroom environments and attitudes have a long history (Gardner, 1975; Ma and Bateson, 1999; Toma et al., 2019; Zhang and Campbell, 2011). Wang and Berlin (2010) indicated that attitudes toward science are effective factors in attaining goals of science education. In addition, they reported that these factors affect student motivation. According to Zhang and Campbell (2011), scientific attitudes of students also direct their interest in lessons and simultaneously affect their long-term success in courses. Attitude, as an affective domain of learning, is an element affecting learning outputs of students in science courses (Ministry of National Education, 2018). Accordingly, the importance of performing attitude studies emerges with regard to obtaining positive outputs on scientific attitude. Individuals with scientific attitudes have inquisitive and argumentative characteristics; therefore, they do not fall prey to preconceptions or dogmatic belief systems. Individuals with positive scientific attitudes are more willing to identify and solve the problems in their surroundings, as well as being willing to search for solutions. In addition, while scientific attitudes may help an individual to be successful, they also support his or her continual improvement by affecting his or her thinking (Demirbaş and Yağbasan, 2006). In this study, the effect of a different variable on attitude was examined by focusing on the relationship between scientific attitudes and intellectual risk-taking behaviors of elementary school students. Theoretical Background While an individual’s attitude cannot always be observed precisely, it largely directs love, hate, and the ideas of the individual (Morgan, 2005). Munby (1980) examined scientific attitudes in four categories as attitudes toward school science, attitudes toward science careers, attitudes toward science itself, and attitudes toward specific issues in science. This examination, indeed, emphasizes the importance of attitudes in terms of long-term learning and indifference toward science or the development of deep understandings (Hong and Lin, 2011). Gardner (1975), however, divided such attitudes into two, as attitudes toward science and scientific attitudes. Moreover, the scientific attitudes included within the context of this study were expressed as a mixture of the will to know and understand, inquiring attitudes, data collection and sense-making, and evaluation and interpretation of results (Education In this study, the relationship between scientific attitudes and intellectual risk-taking behaviors of fourth-grade students in elementary school in Turkey was examined. A total of 184 students participated in the study, which was conducted based on a survey model. For data collection, the “Scientific Attitude Inventory” and the “Intellectual Risk-Taking and Perceptions About Its Predictors Scale in Science Education” were utilized. Descriptive statistical analyses and t-test, ANOVA, simple linear regression, and multiple regression analyses were utilized for the analysis of the data. As a result of this data analysis, it was observed that these elementary school students have scientific attitudes at the “not sure” level and have intellectual risk-taking behaviors at the “mostly correct” level. Gender was not observed to have an effect on scientific attitude; however, it was effective on intellectual risk-taking behavior. In addition, the analysis results demonstrated that there is a meaningful difference between intellectual risk-taking behaviors of students and the educational levels of their fathers. Moreover, when the relations between other pairs of variables were examined, the variables of intellectual risk-taking, gender, educational level of the mother, and educational level of the father together had low-level but meaningful relations with the scientific attitudes of elementary school students. It was indicated that teachers will contribute to students’ adoption of positive scientific attitudes by introducing the lives and studies of scientists, and it was suggested that the effect of changes in educational patterns in classroom environments be examined through experimental studies on intellectual risk-taking behaviors of students. With the results obtained from this study, more light can be shed on what should be done to support students’ intellectual risk-taking behaviors.