Fifth-grade students’ attitudes towards science and their understanding of its social-institutional aspects

Abstract

The present study is based on the Reconceptualized Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science (RFN) (Erduran & Dagger, 2014) which explains science as cognitive, epistemic, and social-institutional system. Kaya and Erduran (2016) analyzed Turkish science curricula and found that social context of science is underemphasized. Thus, this study investigated the impact of teaching science as a social institutional system on 5th grade students’ understanding of social dimension of science and their attitudes towards science .Using pre-test post-test quasiexperimental research design, Science-Institutional Questionnaire (SIQ) and Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) were administered to the experimental (n=19) and control (n=23) groups. The sample was randomly selected from 5th grade students of a public school in İstanbul. Throughout the intervention (4 weeks), the experimental group was exposed to the science lessons enriched with the socialinstitutional aspects of science while the control group was taught with traditionally designed science lessons in the unit “The Earth, Sun and the Moon”. Results of ANCOVA revealed that there were statistically significant differences between the study groups in favor of students in the experimental group on both study variables. In other words, integration of the social-institutional aspects of science into science lessons enhanced students’ understanding of social dimension of science as well as their positive attitudes toward science. This study has a potential to contribute to the literature on NOS in science education and provide science teachers a resource.