Majors’ Gender-Based Affective States Toward Learning Physical Chemistry - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 295

consented to participate in the study via an online survey system before beginning
of the surveys. The survey analysis was kept entirely anonymous, and no informa-
tion was shared with the course instructor or others at the institution.

3.2 Measures

3.2.1 The Modified Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitudes Scales

A modified version of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitudes Scales
(FSMAS) (Fennema & Sherman, 1976 ) was used to describe students gender-

based attitudes toward learning PChem courses. Attitudes that include gender
aspects were of interest because as mentioned earlier, there is a gender-based lack
of interest toward science.
In addition to the Turkish translation, the survey items were modified so that the
instrument is suitable for a chemistry education context rather than a mathematics
education context. A similar approach was previously employed to measure student
attitudes in the context of computer programming by Wiebe et al. ( 2003 ).
The development and implementation of mFSMAS were carried out in three
steps: (1) Fennema-Sherman

'

s Mathematics Attitudes Scale was translated to the
Turkish language, and five experts in science education and the researcher worked
independently at the outset and then at a consensus meeting to guide the final form
of the language translation; (2) to measure students

'

perceptions in learning PChem
II, every item was reworded in terms of “physical chemistry” instead of “mathe-
matics,” and (3) the instrument was implemented via an online survey system.

'

3.2.2 Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol

Two experts worked on the translation (English to Turkish) and back translation of
the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) (Piburn & Sawada, 2000 )
survey in order to gather student observations about the nature of PChem II classes.
The RTOP scale focuses on “reform-based” science education, where the philo-
sophical approach relies on constructivist approaches, often labeled as “inquiry-
based” science education. Specifically, while relying on student perceptions, this
survey was used to describe the classroom environment along a spectrum of
traditional teaching to inquiry-based teaching.