Attitudes toward science among Australian tertiary and secondary school students

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that might be associated with students' attitudes towards science. The participants were 1745 students from secondary schools and universities across Australia. The results of factor analysis, descriptive statistics, Tukey's post hoc test and correlation analysis demonstrate that there were statistically significant differences between male and female students. Finally, the study provides a valid and reliable instrument. Implications of this study for future research are also discussed.

Perceptions of the Social Relevance of Science: Exploring the Implications for Gendered Patterns in Expectations of Majoring in STEM Fields

“…As reported in Table 1, boys and girls had similar perceptions of the social relevance of science (pooled mean = 0.36). This is consistent with other studies that have examined young people's views of the relevance of science [32][33][34][35]38] and underscores the fact that the focus of our study is not about whether girls have a deficit in a STEM-specific resource (as evidenced by a lower mean, for example), but rather whether or not girls' expectations to pursue STEM are more strongly shaped by their perceptions of the social relevance of science.…”

“…This is not to say that the science education literature is not concerned with gender differences, yet the emphasis is typically on identifying those instances where girls trail behind boys, such as science self-confidence, and then focusing on how these could be improved [37]. And studies that explore gender differences in students' perceptions of the social relevance of science typically find that girls' and boys' views are actually very similar [32,33,38]. As such, research in this area does not typically consider these perceptions to be a likely contributor to gender differences in science interest or related future expectations.…”

“…In more recent years, educational researchers have again called attention to this issue, arguing that 'school science' too often treats science fields as varied collections of abstract historical discoveries and intangible phenomenon, asking students to memorize decontextualized facts and concepts that result in their becoming bored and disinterested [31,32]. Current educational reforms are working to change this [20] and although limited in scope, there is empirical evidence that students who view science as socially relevant are more likely to remain engaged with the content and express interest in continuing to study science [19,31,[33][34][35], and that curriculum that directly emphasizes the broad applications and benefits of science for human life can indeed be effective in promoting all students' positive views [36].…”

Adaptation of Science Attitude Scale Developed for Primary School Students into Turkish: Validity and Reliability Studies

“…However, in other studies, it is found that there is no decrease in student attitudes towards science in higher classes (Aiken, 1979). On the other hand, in a very small number of studies, it is found that older students have more positive attitudes (Hassan, 2008). Pell and Jarvis (2001) state that the decrease started in the last two years of primary school, and the studies by Murphy and Beggs (2003) and Sorge (2007) supports this view.…”

“…Science educators have accepted that developing positive attitudes towards science is an important objective of science education (Francis & Greer, 1999;Freedman, 1997;Papanastasiou & Papanastasiou, 2004). Additionally, attitude towards science is a significant factor affecting students' motivation (Hassan, 2008), success (Papanastasiou & Zembylas, 2002), course and career choices (Koballa & Glynn, 2006). Researchers define attitude towards science in different ways (Koballa & Glynn, 2006).…”