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Makale Özeti:
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Nanotechnology has become a popular buzzword in science, technology and politics. This key technology is considered not only a major source of innovation in technology, industry, medicine and other fields, but also one of the main challenges of the industries for the 21st century. However, although the word nanotechnology will be familiar to many teachers and students, the subject is not known entirely and not widely taught in Turkish universities and schools. Therefore, it is really important to determine pre-service science teacher’s awareness, interests and attitudes level about nanotechnology, who will be bringing up future generation of countries. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a multidimensional nanotechnology awareness, knowledge and attitudes of 154 pre-service science teachers having pedagogical education at three different universities (Suleyman Demirel University, Mehmet Akif University and Pamukkale University) in Turkey. We have investigated the relationship between the nanotechnology awareness, knowledge and attitudes of the pre-service science teachers with their age, gender and departments. First of all, an explorative literature study was conducted to gather an initial pool of items and prepared a questionnaire by reviewing the literature, Later, the questionnaire was reviewed by an expert and according to his opinions we have arranged the questionnaire. And then, the questionnaire was applied to 41 first year science students studying at Suleyman Demirel University (SDU) to get feedback and rearrange the questionnaire. Item selection took place using qualitative and quantitative methods. The obtained results from the questionnaire were analyzed by using SPSS program. The results showed that there is no significant difference between the departments. This result is given to that they have less information about nanotechnology and most of the pre-service science teachers have not taken much courses related with nanotechnology and/or they have got the initial information about nanotechnology from advertisements and TV programs. Any differences between universities and gender affecting the nanotechnology awareness, knowledge and attitudes were observed. This is also attributed to that the pre-service teachers did not take any course related with nanotechnology during their undergraduate study. As a result, some courses related with nanotechnology must be added to the curriculum of the universities having teacher education preparing teachers for the schools. Therefore, the science teacher candidates can be trained more effectively to prepare young generation for the future.
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