A Study of Scale Development on Primary School Students' Attitudes towards Project Based Learning 1

The purpose of this research is to develop an attitude scale which intends to measure primary school students' attitudes towards Project Based Learning. A 30 item trial form of the Project Based Learning Attitude Scale was constructed. For this, related literature was reviewed for the learning outcomes of Project Based Learning and these outcomes were used for the construction of the items of the scale. The trial form was administered to totally 698 participants who were fourth grade primary school students in Mersin and Adana. Item scale correlations were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient. As a result of exploratory factor analysis with Promax rotation, a single factor structure with two components and 15 items were obtained. While alpha reliability of the scale was obtained as 0.967, the reliability of the components, 0.93 and 0.83 were obtained respectively. The results of CFA indicated that factor structure fit with the data. It is concluded that the SUMMARY Purpose and Significance: The review of literature related to Project Based Learning revealed that most of the studies in this field have focused on students' academic achievement. This group of studies were experimental ones. The other group of studies have focused on the students' views related to Project Based Learning (PBL). Our review of PBL literature in Turkey indicated that none of these studies attempted to dwell directly on the attitudes of students towards PBL. Since PBL is a frequently used method in primary schools in Turkey recently, attitudes of the students towards this method also play an important role in the teaching-learning process. For the reasons mentioned above, the purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable PBL attitude scale for primary school students. Methods: Totally 698 fourth grade primary school students in Adana and Mersin participated in this study. A 30 item trial form of the Project Based Learning Attitude Scale was constructed. For this, related literature was reviewed for the learning outcomes of PBL and these outcomes were used for the construction of the items of the scale. Item scale correlations were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient. Next, exploratory Factor Analysis was used for determining the factor structure of the scale. The Bartlett and Kaiser- Meyer Olkin (KMO) measures of sampling adequacy were used to examine the appropriateness of factor analysis. Item total test correlations were analyzed in order to determine the rotation technique to achieve factor analysis. Since all the items in the scale showed high correlation with the total scale, Promax rotation technique was used. In Promax rotation delta value was accepted as 0 and Kappa coefficient was accepted as 4. The items with factor loadings greater than 0,30 and communality estimates greater than 0,50 were retained. Cronbach alpha was used for the reliability of the scale. The study of explatory factor analysis with the Promax rotation was repeated after eliminating the items that load on more than one factor. In order to determine the number of the factors, the factors with an eigenvalue greater than one were considered. Results: As a result of exploratory factor analysis with Promax rotation, a single factor structure with two components and 15 items were obtained. While alpha reliability of the scale was obtained as 0.967, the reliability of components, 0.93 and 0.83 were obtained respectively. The results of CFA indicated that factor structure fit with the data. This result indicated that the items of scale sensitive and consistent. Discussion and Conclusion: We hope that the scale might contribute to future studies in the field of Project Based Learning.