Stability and Lability in Science Interest from Middle Schools to the Age of Science Choices (14 + ) |
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| Authors: | Jennifer Bottomley M B Ormerod |
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| Institution: | Brunei University , UK |
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| Abstract: | Summaries English In parts of England and Wales, middle schools have been introduced for pupils of eight to 12 or nine to 13 years of age. From these they enter secondary schools whose general age of entry is 11. It is feared that the teaching of science in middle schools is inadequate and variable. This research has followed the science interests of pupils aged from 12 to 14 and investigated the factors that affect them by means of three questionnaires administered at yearly intervals. The first questionnaire was administered to almost 600 boys and girls mainly to explore their recollections of the science activities they had experienced or not done in the 52 middle schools from which they came. Their liking for science was also measured and each of the activities done or not done was correlated with it. There were activities which correlated positively and negatively with liking for middle‐school science. There were also sex differences, with boys showing greater interest in ‘physical science’ activities and girls in biological ones. The most remarkable finding was that for girls the higher correlating activities were not merely biological but botanical and they were deterred by some activities with animals. The second questionnaire after one year in the secondary schools, i.e. at 13 + , monitored the liking for chemistry, physics and biology taken by about 450 pupils. The third questionnaire was given at 14+ when these pupils had chosen to continue or abandon the further study of the three sciences. All the variables from the three questionnaires were then correlated with these science choices. Although the general influence of liking for middle‐school science had by then disappeared, certain specific middle‐school science activities still correlated significantly with science choices. The correlates of chemistry and physics choice were not exclusively physical science but included biological activities in which some measurement was involved, for example plant growth. There were sex differences. Previous activities with animals was detrimental to girls’ biology choices. A range of other factors had, however, altered pupils’ liking for sciences over the two years in the secondary school: effects of teachers, perceptions of difficulty (especially in the case of girls’ physcial science) and liking for practical work. About a third of the pupils had not made up their minds about what subjects they wanted to study indicating that such an early age of choice is undesirable. |
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| Keywords: | Nature of science Scientific literacy University Pseudo‐science |
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