Can We Make Definite Categorization of Student Attitudes? A Rough Set Approach to Investigate Students’ Implicit Attitudinal Typologies Toward Living Things

This study investigates the possibility of analyzing educational data using the theory of rough sets which is mostly employed in the fields of data analysis and data mining. Data were collected using an open-ended conceptual understanding test of the living things administered to first-year high school students. The responses of randomly selected 60 students among the participants were analyzed using rough set approach on the basis of “nine attitudinal typologies toward wildlife” defined by Kellert (1996). Student responses were tabulated to be used in rough sets and upper and lower approximation analyses were carried out. Students were found to display the characteristics of four out of nine typologies. Analyses revealed that some students who possessed characteristics of a certain typology may partially display the characteristics of other typologies and these typologies could be determined using rough set theory.

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