The Attitudes of Tongan Senior Secondary Students Toward Science

Abstract

As with other Pacific Island nations, the scientific efforts of the Kingdom of Tonga have been hampered through a lack of local scientists and science graduates. As observed globally, the region appears to face a steady decline in student interest and achievement in science, resulting in reduced uptake of science subjects in schools and universities. This study aims to provide insight into the attitudes of Tongan senior secondary students toward science, using the validated Test of Scientific Related Attitudes (TOSRA) instrument. The sample population comprised 2636 students of approximately 15–18 years of age, from 26 schools across Tonga. Overall, the mean attitudes of Tongan senior secondary students toward science were lower than that previously observed for Australian secondary students (Grades 7–10) and Fijian senior secondary students. A significant reduction in attitude was found between forms 5 and 6 for female students from rural areas, but not those from urban areas. No significant changes across different form levels were found for male students. The greatest difference between students’ perspectives was found for the normality of scientists, which may be indicative of cultural views toward this topic. Combined with the similar results of previous research in Fijian students, this may point toward broader differences in the attitudes toward science between students in Pacific Island countries more generally.

Attitude and Achievement of First-Year Chemistry Undergraduate Students at The University of the South Pacific

“…There have been previous studies on student attitude toward science (including several studies looking at chemistry specifically) in this regional population, for example, Naiker et al (2020a) used Test Of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) to evaluate the attitude of secondary Fijian students toward science, finding a generally positive attitude, although differences were observed based on gender and ethnicity. Also, Sharma et al (2021) found slightly poorer attitudes among secondary Tongan students, although there was no difference between genders in this population. Others (Brown et al, 2014a) used the Attitude to the Study of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI) instrument to quantify attitude toward chemistry in cohorts of first-year undergraduate and foundation chemistry students.…”

“…In such cases, teacher motivation and learning design play important roles in garnering student attention and improving students' attitude toward science subjects. Although there has been a sustained level of research into general attitudes toward science using instruments such as the Science Attitude Scale (SAS; Bajaj and Devi, 2021) and the TOSRA (Sharma et al, 2021), there is a recent trend to consider more specific science disciplines, such as chemistry (Montes et al, 2018;Rüschenpöhler and Markic, 2020). This follows from studies demonstrating a visible decrease in student interest and achievement in specific science disciplines (Vilia et al, 2017) and subsequent impaired progress to related undergraduate programs in Higher Education institutes (Sharma et al, 2018).…”

“…This follows from studies demonstrating a visible decrease in student interest and achievement in specific science disciplines (Vilia et al, 2017) and subsequent impaired progress to related undergraduate programs in Higher Education institutes (Sharma et al, 2018). Studies on the effect of student attitude toward achievement have been conducted across a range of subjects such as mathematics, English, physics, and chemistry (Vilia et al, 2017;Dimosthenous et al, 2020;Kaur and Vadhera, 2021;Sharma et al, 2021). However, we focus specifically on studies from the chemistry discipline in the remainder of this section.…”