DEVELOPMENT OF NATURE OF SCIENCE SCALE

The purpose of this study is to develop nature of science scale to assess pre-service class, early childhood, mathematics, and science teachers and in-service teachers’ views on nature of science. After the review of a wide range of literature, the 35-item scale was applied 228 pre-service teachers (pre-school-class-science) atthe beginning of the fall semester of 2011-2012 academic years. During lectures onscience education by going one by one out of these 35 items on the ideas of preserviceteachers were asked substances. In addition consulted experts’ opinions forcontent validity. The new 30-item scale was modified 4-scal propositions. The Natureof Science Scale was applied in four different universities in the spring semester ofthe 2011-2012 academic year (Abant Izzet Baysal, Akdeniz, Trakya and Mersin) 644teachers and 11 science and technology teachers working in public schools in theprovince of Mersin, a total of 655 people. First using the program SPSS exploratoryfactor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis was then conducted using the AMOSprogram. After the analyses, five factors of the scale were determined and the totalnumber of items were found to be 19. The reliability of the scale as a result of allCronbah’s alpha internal consistency coefficient was .83. With a sample of 391 preserviceteachers confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with AMOS program.According to the results of confirmatory factor analysis χ2/df rate was calculated as0.83. This ratio (0.83) shows that the measurement model fit the data well. All thisresults in 5-dimensional factor structure of the scale has been confirmed again on aseparate sample.