Advanced science students’ understanding on nature of science in Turkey

Although many studies about understandings of high school students on epistemology of science exist, the studies examining specifically NOS aspects with advanced science students are lacking. In spite of lack of studies with advanced science studies, there are some studies on epistemology of science with gifted and talented high school students as similar groups to advanced science students. Since advanced science students have also higher IQ scores and are successful on any content of study (Özaslan, Yıldız & Çetin, 2009). The epistemological studies with gifted students as advanced students were conducted by using different approaches. As the first example, Thomas (2008) studied on Perry epistemological development model and he made his study by focusing on 485 gifted high school students. The author focused on nature of knowledge and learning, then selected the ethnicity difference for the study and used Learning Context Questionnaire as a measurement tool. The author used a course from dualism to relativism for classification of the students. They found that sophomore gifted students were in the position of multiplicity. As a comparison study, Shommer and Dunnell (1994) compared the gifted and non-gifted high school students in terms of beliefs in fixed ability to learn, simple knowledge, quick learning, and certain knowledge. They studied with 1165 high school students. They classified the students as gifted based on the criteria that students must score not less than at the 97th percentile on a standardized individual test of intelligence or rank no less than the 95th percentile on two or more academic areas of a standardized achievement test in order to be classified as gifted. They found that there were no significant differences in students' epistemological beliefs at the beginning of high school whereas gifted students were less likely to believe in simple knowledge and quick learning by the end of high school. Non-gifted students' beliefs in simple knowledge and quick learning remained stable across time. As similar to the results of Thomas (2008), there was not enough evidence to suggest differences between gifted and non-gifted students' beliefs in the early years of high school. The study’s the most consistent result indicated that while gifted students changed their beliefs in simple knowledge and quick learning over time, the non-gifted students' beliefs remained stable for this time interval.

In the other study on epistemological beliefs with gifted students, epistemological intentions and epistemological beliefs were studied from self-regulation theory perspective by Neber and Schommer-Aikins (2002). The study included the total number of the participants of the study is 133, 69 of them are boys whereas 64 of them are girls. The participants had been determined by a screening procedure using the Stanford–Binet and they scored in the top 2–3% of this test. They were enrolled in the gifted schools in New York. Context of the study was science for the elementary level and physics for secondary level. The “epistemological intention” aspect was considered as intention to learn “facts” or “usable knowledge” while the “epistemological beliefs” aspect was considered beliefs on “innate ability”, “no hard work”, “quick learning”, “single answers”, “avoiding integration” and “certain knowledge” aspects of Schommer (1993). In general, there was no significant difference in epistemological beliefs between high school students and the elementary level students whereas there is a difference in epistemological intentions which showed that high school students aimed at acquiring more applicable knowledge than the elementary students. The significantly positive correlations between epistemological intentions focusing on the acquisition of facts and usable knowledge and strategy use were found in the study. For the deeper focusing the question for relationships among variables, a multivariate regression analysis was computed and the epistemological intention to acquire facts in science was found as one of strongest predictor of regulatory strategy use.

As seen in the studies mentioned above, high school gifted students epistemological beliefs were studied with different focus points than nature of science perspective and all of them were conducted from quantitative perspective. By the proposed study, the field might gain new insights and different sources for the misunderstandings on the “aspects of nature of science”.