Examining the attitudes of primary school students towards science and social studies courses

Abstract

The study aims to identify the fourth graders’ attitudes towards the courses of science and social studies and the correlations between them. The study was conducted with the participation of 285 fourth graders attending the primary schools in Mersin and Balıkesir in 2017-2018 academic year. The “Attitudes towards Science Scale” developed by Geban, Ertepınar, Yılmaz, Altın and Şahbaz (1994) and the “Attitudes towards Social Studies Course Scale” developed by Kalın and Topkaya (2017) were used in this study as the tools of data collection. The Cronbach’s Alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be .84 for the attitudes towards social studies course. The attitudes towards science scale is a five-pointed Likert type scale of 15 items. The reliability for the scale was found as 0.88. At the end of the study, the fourth graders’ attitudes towards science course and social studies course were analysed according to gender and the city where they lived, and consequently, recommendations were made to their teachers. The most important finding obtained in the study was that there were medium, positive and significant correlations between fourth graders’ attitudes towards science course and their attitudes towards social studies course. Thus, the interpretation that the two courses influence each other can be made. In this context, it can be concluded that these two courses should be handled within the framework of common themes with an interdisciplinary understanding.