Examining Changing Attitudes in Secondary School Science

By P. Barmby, P. Kind, Karen Jones. 2008

415 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study, carried out in England, examined the variation of attitudes towards science over the first three years of secondary schooling and with gender. The study in question was part of an evaluation of the “Lab in a Lorry” project, and involved 932 pupils completing a pre‐measure questionnaire containing items looking at six separate attitude constructs. From these data, two main patterns emerged; pupils’ attitudes towards science declined as they progressed through secondary school, and this decline was more pronounced for female pupils. These conclusions are largely in agreement with previous studies in this field. However, in examining separate attitude constructs, we were also able to identify that the sharpest decline occurred specifically for pupils’ attitude towards learning science in school. Furthermore, using linear regression, we identified that, as pupils progress through school, this construct becomes a greater influence on attitudes towards future participation in science. Therefore, we also concluded that learning science in school is a particular area that needs to be concentrated upon, if we are to improve children’s attitudes towards science. In the final part of the paper, we drew on interview data obtained from 44 pupils involved in the Lab in a Lorry study. Pupils’ comments in these interviews provided further insight into why pupils are “switched off” by school science. We drew out the most prevalent themes that emerged in the interviews, in order to provide further insight into why pupils do not enjoy science in school.

Subfields: Education, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e87a8ec1830156a93fe6823e62506717903de2d

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Citations in the corpus

Students attitudes towards technology (2015, background): “Barmby et al. (2008) reviewed the relationship between age and attitudes towards science and technology.”
Development and validation of the ACSI: measuring students’ science attitudes, pro-environmental behaviour, climate change attitudes and knowledge (2012, background): “Student age is also important: children at the primary level have rather positive attitudes towards science, whereas attitude scores decline during the secondary school period (Barmby, Kind, and Jones 2008 ; Koballa and Glynn 2007 ; Osborne, Driver, and Simon 1998 ).”
The Role of Emotional Factors in Building Public Scientific Literacy and Engagement with Science (2012, background): “A closer check by Barmby et al. (2008) revealed that participating in science activities outside of school (e.g. watching science programs on TV, visiting science museums, or reading science magazines) is the most significant determinant of secondary school students’ intended future interest in scie”
Science-related Aspirations Across the Primary–Secondary Divide: Evidence from two surveys in England (2014, methodology): “The survey was initially developed by drawing on previously validated instruments (Barmby et al., 2008) and focus groups with Year 6 children (Archer et al.”
Analysis of the Decline in Interest Towards School Science and Technology from Grades 5 Through 11 (2014, methodology): “…was also recorded: ‘‘pupils’ attitudes towards science declined as they progressed through secondary school, and this decline was more pronounced for female pupils […] this construct becomes a greater influence on attitudes towards future participation in science’’ (Barmby et al. 2008, p.1075).”
Students’ attitude towards natural sciences (2019, background): “Whereas according to Kind in [4] Attitude can be defined as the feelings that a person has about an object, based on his or her knowledge and belief about that object.”