Comparing the Science Festival Attitudes Oof Students Participating as Observers in School Science Fairs

In Turkey, science festivals have become more widespread and have begun to be organized especially in secondary schools.The aim of this research was to determine and compare the science festival attitudes of students participating as observers in 4006-TUBITAK science fairs organized at schools.In the research, descriptive survey was employed.The sample of the research consisted of 531 (268 female, 263 male) secondary school students of four different schools in different provinces of Turkey.Data were collected with the students of two schools in Elazığ, a school in Malatya and a school in Diyarbakır, using science festival attitude scale.Data were analyzed by using the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).The results show that students participating in the science fairs have moderate attitude to science festivals.The attitudes of the different school students to science festivals were significantly different.This situation was interpreted as the fact that the workshops taking place at the fairs were varied and different approaches of the teachers and administrators in charge.The attitudes of the students can be raised from moderate to high with the increase of the number of fairs in which students exhibit their projects without competition environment.