Abstract:

Promoting science-related attitudes is considered to be an important goal in science education. While there is a widespread agreement that their promotion is an important aim of science education, there is still uncertainty about what meaning should be given to “attitudes towards science”.

In the area of education, attitudes are perceived as the emotional reactions of students towards school subjects, teachers, or science in general. Regarding attitudes toward science, there is general agreement that they are based on a multidimensional construct comprising various aspects and are perceived as emotional reactions driven by feelings, beliefs, and values.

Over the years the study of attitudes has raised the interest of many educationists and psychologists, partly because they are an important and capable parameter to positively influence students' will to learn but also positively related to school performance.

To ascertain students' attitudes towards science, especially experimental-based activities such as inquiry-based activities, several research questionnaires can be found. However, these instruments are mainly developed in the English language, therefore must be translated and adapted to other languages and in addition, be checked for reliability and validity. The test of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA) questionnaire was originally developed by Fraser in 1978 (Fraser, 1978). Since then, numerous studies regarding Science education have been conducted using this tool, so it can be said that it is thoroughly tested and applied.

The main purpose of this study was to adapt and validate the TOSRA instrument, in Greek upper high school students, in which five out of seven factors were adopted from the original questionnaire for methodological reasons related to our research. The aim was to study students' attitudes who had already had some experimental experience in physics during their previous school years. For this reason, 521 students from three different geographical departments of Greece, anonymously participated in the study.

Besides the different cultural contexts and school practices (Greece vs USA and Australia), three additional parameters were changed in the current study relative to the original work of Fraser;
(a) students belong to a slightly older age group and educational level (10th, 11th grades vs. 7th to 10th grade students in the original study),
(b) students attend a different education system,
(c) our focus is on the measurement of students attitudes in a specific discipline (Physics vs. Science in General).

The Greek version of TOSRA was analyzed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis, using IBM SPSS (ver.28) and JASP (ver. 0.16.4) statistical softwares. Five factors were adopted for analysis, and the alpha internal reliability values were calculated. The 5 factors, as in the original TOSRA questionnaire, are Adoption of Scientific Attitudes (α=.675), Attitude to Scientific Inquiry (α=.766), Leisure Interest in Science (α=.962), Enjoyment of Physics Lessons (α=.878) and Career Interest in Science (α=.881). The fit indexes were found to be CMIN/DF=2.36, CFI=.834, TLI=.822, GFI=.795, RMSEA=.051, and SRMR=.069 indicating an adequately good fit to the model. The standardized estimate for the factors’ covariance was also calculated and will be reported at the conference.

References:
[1] Fraser,B.J.(1978). Development of a test of science‐related attitudes. Science Education, 62(4), 509-515. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.3730620411

Keywords:

Attitudes towards Science, Test of Scientific Related Attitudes (TOSRA), upper high school students, Instrument development, Science Education.