Abstract:

Allowing students get familiar with scientific applications and scientific processes is considered as one of the main purposes of education. Teachers have this responsibility to guide the students and help them recognize science and scientific methods. The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptions of teacher candidates about science and scientists. The sample group was constituted by 63 pre service teachers who were studying at Primary Education Department of Bulent Ecevit University. Phenomenological research design was adapted for this study. Phenomenological studies aim to uncover meaning of lived experiences of people and structure of ‘experience’ in phenomenology has a wide range including emotions, perceptions, thoughts, imaginations, actions. Research data of this study were collected in two stages. In the first stage participants were asked to draw a ‘scientist doing scientific research’. Drawing technique is commonly preferred data collection tool to explore perceptions in educational sciences. In the next stage, 8 open ended questions were used as data collection instrument and participants were allowed to express their views about concepts mainly on ‘science’, ‘scientists’ and ‘scientific researches’. Analysis of the drawings indicated that teacher candidates, still in today’s world, have tendency to perceive scientists as old, man, studying at a laboratory. Analysis of open-ended questions also supports this perspective where 86% participants mentioned the name of Einstein as the first name that came to their mind when describing a scientist. According to %65, people should study mats, physics, chemistry or biology to be a scientist. %74 does not believe that academic people at universities can do ‘real’ scientific researches like ‘real scientists as ‘Newton or Tesla’. Results also showed that the term ‘science’ generally associated with ‘proof’. İt is concluded that, teacher candidates have some stereotypical views and they need to broaden their perspective.

Keywords:

Perception of science, Perception of scientist.