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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 15, Issue 1, Article 9 (Jun., 2014) |
Turkey has an important geo-strategic locality for cultural diversity in the world as a transitional area between western and eastern culture. Again, income rates per individual, dense of population and expenditure for education are other important other factors to define Turkey. The population of Turkey was estimated as 70,586,256 in 2007 (TÜİK, 2008). For the income rates per individual, Turkey was reported to have 2.638 $ in 2003 (Celik, 2004). As the other parameter, expenditure percentage of Gross Product Domestic (GPD) for education is 3.5 for Turkey in 2001 (OECD, 2004). In addition to these general characteristics, Turkish students are one of the worst groups in international examinations such as TIMMS 1998 and PISA 2003 (Berberoğlu & Kalender, 2005; Özgün-Koca & Şen, 2002). Importance of these examinations for the study is that these examinations have been providing detailed findings about curricular effectiveness for scientific literacy as a higher order title for nature of science and clearer picture for international comparisons. So, 15-age group was selected for this study.
What is more, Turkish Educational System is based on centralized administration and has only one science curriculum for all schools at the same level. Among the high schools in Turkey, there are “Science High Schools”. These schools have more time and dense content for science courses than traditional high schools (6 course-times per week for ninth grades, 12 course-times per week for tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades). The schools which are supported by state and located only at provinces of the country (The number of provinces is over 80) provide advanced science courses. Advanced science students in the country are selected here according to their results on a nation-wide examination. Teachers are also selected for the schools by a formal evaluation process and examination.
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