فهم طبيعة العلم لدى طلاب السنة التحضرية في جامعة الملك سعود و علاقته بحججهم حول قضايا علمية اجتماعية

Abstract EN

This study aims to explore and investigate the understanding of the nature of science and its relationship with the arguments made by students of the scientific major in the preparatory year at King Saud University.

A descriptive approach was used to achieve the objectives of the study where the study sample consisted of 118 students.

To collect data ; the researcher used a questionnaire that consisted of two socioscientific issues including eating fast food and acquisition of hybrid vehicles.

The data were analyzed inductively using several aspects (tentative, subjective, and empirical) to determine the level of understanding the nature of science.

Further, the argument components (data, rebuttal, and warrant) were used to determine the level of the students’ arguments.

The results showed that students had a naive understanding of the nature of science and a weak level of the arguments.

The pearson coefficient analysis also showed that there was a correlation between the components of the argument with each other but no clear correlation between the nature of science aspects and the argument components.