The purpose of this study is providing a scale for measuring attitudes toward science among Persian secondary school students. A total of 300 (150 girls and 150 boys) of second grade students from all disciplines including science and mathematics in secondary education, participated in the study. Research instrument was, translated Persian version of Simpson – Troost Attitude Questionnaire (STAQ). After performing the scale among the sample, the data was analyzed by SPSS software. The reliability of questionnaire was found to be .84. Factor analysis indicated that more than 35.8% of the total variance was explained with the scale scores. After factor rotation, five factors of attractiveness of science, the class / teacher, self-directed efforts, anxiety toward science and the family pattern were identified. Thus it was shown that the scale is multidimensional and the dimensions have appropriate reliability and validity to measure attitudes toward science, so this instrument could be used in the next Persian research in measuring attitudes toward science. Multivariate Analysis (MANOVA) of data showed that there is no significant difference between sex and students’ attitudes toward science. But in the third factor (self-directed efforts) was a significant difference between sex and students’ attitudes toward science and the average of female students were higher than male students. Test results also showed that there is significant different between discipline of students and their attitudes to science and attitudes of empirical science students have the better attitudes than themselves, while science students in first factors (attractiveness of science) and in second factor (class / Teacher), had mean higher average than mathematical physics students.

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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.

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Attitudes towards science is an important construct of science learning which has been affected by many factors. The main purpose of this research was to investigate whether the metacognition strategies predict students’ attitudes towards science. Accordingly, a total of 347 senior secondary students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their metacognition strategies and attitudes towards science. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate the validity of a structural/latent variable model. Findings revealed several direct and indirect effects among the factors under investigation. Of special importance, metacognition strategies positively predicted attractiveness of science (science is fun), class/teacher activities and family model as variables of students’ attitudes towards science. Attractiveness of science was also found to have effects on the science anxiety and family model was found to have effects on class/teacher activities. One important finding was that metacognition strategies could decrease students’ science anxiety. According to this information, it is recommended that science educators encourage students to employ metacognition strategies in science that may lead to more positive students’ attitudes towards science. Key words: metacognition strategies, attitudes towards science, senior secondary students, structural equation modeling.