Turkish Adaptation of Nature of Technology Scale

Abstract

Technology has always existed not for recently. For ages, its effect has occurred on society, economy and politics and evolution of technology is closely related to human development. Accordingly, human needs and desires are satisfied with technological knowledge and problem solving which is seemed as innovative change (International Technology Education Association [ITEA], 2005). However, nature and scope of technology which is a very important place in our lives is not fully understood (Aydın & Karacam, 2015; Bybee, 2010; DiGironimo, 2011; ITEA, 2006). Researches about nature of technology showed that technology in people's minds remains just as electric products, such as phones or computers (DeVries, 2003; Lewis, 1999; Volk & Dugger, 2005). Technology should be considered as a whole not one thing that separates the parts (Williams, 2000; Yıldız & Baltacı, 2016). Understanding nature of technology is possible with only education completely. Since there are limited studies about nature of technology in science education (e.g., Liou, 2015) and is no required number of scales especially in Turkish language, this study is needed. For all of these needs to be resolved, the purpose of this study is to adapt ‘Nature of Technology Scale’ into Turkish. The sample consisted of 255 pre-service science teachers who enrolled in the faculty of education of a university in Turkey. In the study, as an instrument, ‘The Student Concepts of the Nature of Technology Questionnaire’ developed by Liou (2015) was used. The data in this study were collected in the 2015-2016 spring semester. Data were analyzed with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method. According to findings, our data results showed that this study is suitable for Turkish adaptation of scale (CMın/Df, 1.52, GFI, .94, NFI, .92, RMSEA, .04, CFI, .95). Turkish form of the scale has 29 items that fall under 6 factors.