ÖZARSLAN, Murat Balıkesir Üniversitesi - Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Turkey , BİLGİN, İbrahim Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi - Eğitim Fakültesi, Turkey

THE EFFECTS OF THE STUDENTS’ COGNITIVE STYLES OF FIELDDEPENDENT/INDEPENDENT AND SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS TO THE STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF MATTER CONCEPTS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD SCIENCE

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In this study the effects of the students’ cognitive styles of fielddependent/independent and scientific thinking skills to the students’ understanding of thenature of matter concepts and attitudes toward science were investigated. Sample included 770 eight grade students at 10 junior high schools in Bolu. Four data collection instrument were used in this study: The Group Embedded Figures Test, Scientific Thinking Skills Test, Nature of Matter Concepts Test, and Attitude Scale towards Science. Data were analyzed using by descriptive statistics and multiple variance analysis (MANOVA) at SPSS 13.0. The study results revealed that the field dependent/independent students were statistically significant predictors of the students’ achievements, in favor of the field independent students. However, there was no statistically significant difference between students’ cognitive style of field dependence/independence and attitudes toward science. In addition, according to students’ scientific thinking skills to understand the concepts of the nature of matter concepts and their attitudes toward science was statistically significant difference. This difference was in favor of the abstract thinking scientific thinking skills.

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Attitude towards science , Cognitive styles , Field dependent , independent , Nature of matter , Scientific thinking skills.

Mustafa Kemal University Journal Of Graduate School Of Social Sciences

110