Middle-School Students’ Perceptions of History of Science

Abstract

This study aims to investigate middle school students’ perceptions ofhistory of science. The participants were a total of 140 students who studied at 5th,6th, 7th and 8th middle school grade levels. A Word-Association-Test (WAT) wasused to collect data. After data collection, frequencies of response-words weredetermined. By using cut-point technique, concept webs were drawn. According tothe findings, the most different response-words were gathered from the 5th graders,and the least different response-words were gathered from the 8th graders.Participants generally associated the history of science concept with the scientistswho made inventions. Besides that, students in the lower grades gave the mostdifferent response-words while 8th graders generally associated the concept withthe subjects in the science curriculum.