A Study of Iranian Students’ Attitude towards Science and Technology, School Science and Environment, Based on the ROSE Project

Abstract

This study has investigated attitudes towards science and technology, school science and environmental issues among middle school students. The population included all 3rd grade students in Isfahan and a total of 250 students (120 female and 130 male) were selected through stratified random sampling method. Research instrument was the Persian translation of the Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) Questionnaire. After pilot study, data were analyzed by SPSS. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for this scale was set to be .94. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and one sample t-test and independent t-test were used. Results indicated that there is a positive attitude towards science and technology, school science and environmental issues among students in three components of study. However, there was not a positive attitude towards some items of these components. The results also showed that in three components of the study, only there is a meaningful difference between males and females points of views in attitude towards environmental issues. According to this result, males have higher averages than the females. The results of this research provide important information about Iranian students’ attitude towards science and could be used by science educators to development of science curricula and science text books.