Gender Differences in Attitudes to Science for Third Year Pupils: an argument for single‐sex teaching groups in mixed schools

Abstract

An attitude to science scale for third year pupils in mixed and single-sex schools has been developed and given to 2300 children in the South-West of England. This test has five components, namely attitudes to science, physics, chemistry, biology and school. The results are analysed and used to support an argument for single-sexing some school subjects in mixed schools, thus helping to include some of the better features of single-sex schools in a mixed-school environment.

The Interaction Effects of Gender and Grade Level on Secondary School Students’ Attitude towards Learning Chemistry

“…On the contrary, male students exhibited higher liking towards theory lessons in lower grades and the liking tended to decrease in the higher grades. These findings appear to contradict other previously reported studies (Barnes et al, 2005;Cheung, 2009b;Harvey & Stables, 1986). Although females started with liking chemistry theory lessons more than the male counterparts, however their attitude just remained marginally positive across grades from form 4 to upper 6 with the mean score ranging between 2.78 and 3.17.…”

“…At the same time they also reported that male students' self-concept in chemistry and perceptions of the usefulness of chemistry is relatively lower than their female peers. On the contrary, in other studies, boys were perceived to have more positive attitude towards learning chemistry than girls (Barnes et al, 2005;Harvey & Stables, 1986;Menis, 1983). In addition, a survey involving grade 10 students in Israel claimed that boys had more positive attitude towards learning chemistry compared to girls.…”

“…In Australia, a survey involving 449 year 10 students from five different high schools in Sydney indicated that male students are more interested in learning chemistry (Barnes et al 2005). In another quantitative study involving 2,311 third year secondary school students in England, male students were found to have more positive attitude towards chemistry than other subjects such as biology, physics and general science (Harvey & Stables, 1986). The interaction effect between gender and grade level on attitude towards learning chemistry was also identified among 954 chemistry students in Hong Kong (Cheung, 2009b).…”

Students’ Attitudes Toward Chemistry Lessons: The Interaction Effect between Grade Level and Gender

“…For example, in Brunei, Dhindsa and Chung (1999) explored Form 5 students' enjoyment of chemistry learning and reported that females enjoyed chemistry lessons more than males. In contrast, in a study of third year secondary school students in England, Harvey and Stables (1986) found that males had a more positive attitude toward chemistry than girls. Hofstein et al (1977) surveyed a sample of grades 11 and 12 students in Israel and found that there was a decline in attitude toward the study of chemistry when students progressed from grade 11 to grade 12.…”

“…Furthermore, research has revealed that students show different attitudes to physics, chemistry, and biology in school (Barnes et al 2005;Harvey and Stables 1986;Hofstein et al 1977;Kahle and Meece 1994;Murphy and Whitelegg 2006;Osborne and Collins 2001;Spall et al 2004;Stables and Wikeley 1997;Steinkamp and Maehr 1984). Girls tend to respond more positively to biological sciences than to physical sciences (Foster 1967;Gardner 1975;Johnson 1987;Kelly 1988;Ramsden 1998;Stables 1990;Stark and Gray 1999;Warrington and Younger 2000).…”