Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in pre-service Science teachers’ astronomy achievement, attitudes towards astronomy and skills for spatial thinking in terms of their years of study. Another purpose of the study was to find out whether there was correlation between pre-service teachers’ astronomy achievement, attitudes towards astronomy and skills for spatial thinking. The study was conducted with 280 pre-service teachers (freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors) studying at the education faculty of a university in Black Sea Region of Turkey. The data were collected through Astronomy Achievement Test, Astronomy Attitude Test and Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Visualization of Rotations. One way factor analysis (One-Way Anova) technique for independent groups was used for data analysis in order to find out whether pre-service teachers’ astronomy achievement, attitudes towards astronomy and skills for spatial thinking differed in terms of their years of study. In order to find out whether there was correlation between pre-service teachers’ astronomy achievement, attitudes towards astronomy and skills for spatial thinking, simple linear correlation analysis was conducted and Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficient was checked. The results of the data analysis showed that pre-service teachers’ astronomy achievement, attitudes towards astronomy and skills for spatial thinking differed significantly in terms of their years of study. In addition, a low positive correlation was found between pre-service teachers’ astronomy achievement and attitudes towards astronomy while a high positive correlation was found between pre-service teachers’ astronomy achievement and their skills for spatial thinking. In line with these results, recommendations were made to increase the number of astronomy classes in education faculties and to teach astronomy not only in fourth year but also in the first three years.

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