The Investigation of Attitudes towards Statistics of the 7th and 8th Grade Middle School Students According to Some Variables

In parallel with the reflection of education reforms has been experienced all around the world, some structural revisions implemented and the basic approach of the curriculum changed since 2005 ? 2006 education period. Besides the change of curriculum approach, curriculum has been revised in terms of learning areas in 2013. Statistics and probability is one of the learning areas among 4 different areas in mathematics. With all those curriculum reform movements, not only the knowledge of the individuals that they need in real life but also it was aimed to make students develop positive attitudes towards mathematics (MEB TTKB, 2013). The study focused on statistics topic of statistics and probability learning area and it was aimed to investigate the relationship among of 7th and 8th grade middle school students’ attitudes towards statistics and variables of gender, grade level and mathematics achievements. The universe of the study consisted of middle school 7th and 8th grade students in Trabzon. The sample of the study included 372 (207 female and 165 male) 7th and 8th grade students who are studying at four different middle schools in Trabzon. Statistical Attitude Scale which was developed by Yılmaz (2006a) was used in order to gather the data. Besides, the personal information form was used to determine the gender, grade level and mathematics achievement of the sample as another data collective tool. During analysis, with the descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA was used in order to reveal whether the difference among the means were significant. As a result of the study it was reached that female students had more positive attitude than male students towards statistics. In addition, it was seen that 7th graders had more positive attitude than 8th graders towards statistics in terms of grade level variable. While the scores from Statistical Attitude Scale investigated in consideration of students’ mathematical achievement, it was revealed that the more math achiever students had more positive attitudes towards statistics compare to the students who were less math achievers. When taken into account the result of this study, learning activities which provoke student to learn and develop positive attitudes gains more importance. For further researchers it was recommended to design mathematical learning environments to raise students’ attitudes and effectiveness of these environments can be investigated.