Investigating Scientific Creativity Level of Seventh Grade Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate scientific creativity level of elementary seventh grade students. Additionally, relationship between students’ scientific creativity and views of nature of science and attitude towards science and technology were investigated. The participants of the research were consisted of 300, 7th grade students who attend to schools in Tokat during 2011-2012 academic years and were selected with stratified sampling method. ‘Creativity in Science Test, CST’, which was developed by the researcher to determine the scientific creativity level, was used. ‘Attitudes Toward Science and Technology Course Scale’ (Akınoğlu, 2001) was used to assess student's attitude toward science and technology course. And lastly, ‘Nature of Science Scale for the Primary School Students’, adopted by Çelikdemir (2006) was used to students’ understanding of nature of science. According to findings of the main study conducted in Tokat, a significant relation was found between scientific creativity and attitude towards science class. It was found that there was a meaningful difference between students’ scientific creativity level and their view of nature of science. Furthermore, it has been found that students’ scientific creativity varied between low and moderate and the answers given to the questions on the test were lower than expected and mostly ordinary.