Investigating Tenth Grade Students’ Science Process Skills with Different Variables

Science process skills play a crucial role when conducting scientific inquiry. Thus, these skills are believed to help students think and act like a scientist. Science process skills might be also related to initiating students to take responsibility for their own learning. The aim of this study is to determine science process skills level of the tenth-grade students with an emphasis on the following variables: school type, gender, parental education status and socio-economic status. The participants of this study were 563 10th grade students selected from 10 different Anatolian high schools located in Trabzon, Turkey. The science process skill test and a student demographics form were used as data collection tools. The data obtained in the study were analyzed with the SPSS 22 statistics software by employing descriptive and inferential methods. The t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were utilized for independent samples. As a result of the analysis, the average of the science process skills of all the students in the sample was found moderate. It was determined that there was a meaningful relationship between the science process skills of the students and the gender, parent education status, school type and family income. Depending on this result, it is considered valuable to undertake new studies to improve students' science process skills especially for the disadvantaged students