In early childhood, people develop some beliefs that can affect the whole lives. Developing pseudoscientific beliefs can cause differences on child's nature of scientific knowledge. Giving importance on prevent gaining pseudoscientific knowledge may help qualified lifelong learning abilities. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the elementary school students' nature of scientific knowledge and views about some common pseudoscientific ideas. Also some variables' impacts on data collection tool scores were searched, too. The study was conducted on 2014-2015 educational year with 5 th , 6 th , 7 th and 8 th grade elementary school students. In the study, Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale (NSKS) and eight statements were used to collect data. The aim of these eight statements was to figure out students' pseudoscientific ideas about evolution and nature of science. SPSS 20.00 programme was used to analyze data. It was found that girls' total scale scores were found higher than boys' total scores. Girls' amoral, parsimonious, testable and unified sub-dimension scores were also found higher than boys' scores. 7 th grade students showed higher total scale scores than the other grade students. Also, it was seen that 7 th grade students have more sophisticated knowledge about evolution than the nature of science features. At the end of the study the findings were discussed according to literature and some suggestions were given.

This research aims to determine the environmental risk perceptions of preservice science teachers (PSTs) and compare their risk scores in relation to different variables. The research participant group consisted of PSTs (N = 205) from the Faculty of Education in the Department of Science Education at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University in Turkey. The environmental risk perception scale (ERPS) was used as a data collection tool and the environmental risk perception interview form (ERPIF) was used during the interviews. A survey model was used in the research. An enriched design in which quantitative and qualitative analyses were used together was included. Quantitative results from the research show “radiation,” “factory waste,” and “hazardous (chemical) waste,” as environmental problems that PSTs consider the riskiest. The least risky environmental problems were “overgrazing of animals in meadows and pastures,” “commercial fishing,” and “open mining.” According to the qualitative interview results, “air pollution” and “factory waste” were seen as the riskiest environmental problems, while “environmental waste” was considered the least risky environmental problem. In addition, while the females had a higher environmental risk perception than the males, there was a significant difference between the 3rd and 4th levels with 4th level PSTs favoring a higher environmental risk perception. There was no significant difference between the environmental risk perception scores of the PSTs depending on whether they took an environmental course or not; neither was there any significant difference issuing from the educational status of PSTs’ parents.