Teaching for transformative experience is derived from the works of John Dewey grounding on his aesthetic philosophy. Transformative experiences is defined by Pugh (2004; Pugh, Linnenbrink-Garcia, Koskey, Stewart & Manzey 2009) as the aesthetically understanding of daily life experiences especially out of school with the connection of already learned science concepts. Pugh (2002) states the principle qualities of transformative experiences as (a) motivated use (active use) (b) an expansion of perception and (c) an experiential (expansion of) value. Motivated use is employing science concepts out of school to appreciate and understand the world differently and more thoroughly even though application of the concept is not necessary. After using the concept as motivated, the students’ horizon will expand that they will be led to expansion of perception and the students will see the world in a different, new way. Finally, experiential value refers to appreciating the concept (content) for the sake of experience it presents.

Pugh (2011) argues that experiencing science content in a transformative manner may lead to deep and long lasting learning. Pugh et al. (2009) demonstrated that highly engaging in transformative experiences positively predicted the change in conceptions of the topic of natural selection. Likewise, Girod et al. (2010) found that fifth grade students engaging in transformative experiences performed better on both post and follow-up tests of conceptual understanding than the students in the control condition taught by rational and cognitive models. Overall, teaching for transformative experiences was found to contribute to students’ enduring science learning and conceptual understanding. Concerning predictors of transformative experiences, Pugh et al. (2009) found that students who defined themselves as identified with science and adopting mastery goal orientation were engaging in higher levels of transformative experiences. However, adopting performance goals were unrelated to engagement in transformative experiences. Although transformative experiences can contribute to students’ science understanding, students engage rarely in them, thus, there is need for designing science instruction so that it fosters transformative experiences (Pugh et al., 2009).

In light of the abovementioned literature, this study aims to explore whether transformative experiences prevail in Turkish middle school science classes. Additionally, it is aimed to investigate whether students’ science identity perceptions are related to transformative experiences. Accordingly, following research questions are generated:

1. How prevalent are transformative experiences among Turkish middle school students in science classes?
2. What is the relationship between transformative experiences in science and science identity?

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