New Perspectives in Science Education

In Turkey, an eight-year compulsory-continuous education system turned into a twelve-year compulsory education system, which is divided into three periods as 4+4+4, and released to the public on 11 April 2012. Since 2012, 5th grade students have been studying as secondary school students. The inclusion of 5th grade students into secondary school leads to some problems. In line with this fact, the purpose of this study is to examine science teachers’ views regarding the inclusion of 5th grade students into secondary school.  Participants of the study were selected through opportunistic sampling and consisted of 36 science teachers teaching in secondary schools in Afyonkarahisar, Turkey. The research was performed at the end of the fall term of the 2014-2015 academic years. Data of this study were collected through a survey. The survey was consisted of personal information of the participant science teachers (gender, seniority etc.) and an open ended question form. The analyses of the open-ended questions are ongoing. Gathered data from the open-ended question form will be analyzed with content analysis under some themes. Moreover, some recommendations related to all results will be given when the analyses will be concluded.