The Study Of Middle School Students’ Science Attitudes Based On Scientific Competencies

In recent years, the evaluation and assessment of science education have been mostly focus on the knowledge and competencies while the attitudes of the students are often overlooked. However, students’science attitudes including understanding of the nature of science, perception of the relationship between their daily life and the social development as well as the school science are also critical to science education. Attemping to bridge the gap in the field of evaluation and assessment of students’ science attitudes, this study systematically examined middle school students’ science attitudes including their interests in science, attitudes towards science and technology, science education, future science-related career, environmental issues, school science courses and science-related experiences outside of school based on the gender and scientific competencies.In this study, a likert scale questionnaire developed from an international project, ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) responses of 2728 ninth graders and a scientific competencies test responses of 2617 ninth graders in Shanghai were analyzed, independent t-test, chi-square tests were used to examine the differences in gender and among the students with the different level of scientific competencies, besides, the validity and reliability of the research instruments are also discussed based on Rasch model.The main finding of the study demonstrate that (1) The results of the assessment and evaluation of students’scientific competencies are similar to the results measured by PISA 2009 and PISA 2012, our students demonstrated high level of scientific competencies, over ninty six percent of the students meet the basic requirement of the scientific competencies (equal to or above level two). (2) There is no statistically significant gender difference in scientific competencies (3) There is a statistically significant difference in students’ three different scientific competencies, namely, identifying scientific issues, explaining phenomena scientifically and using scientific evidence, the results indicated that the students showed statistically significant higher scientific competencies in using scientific evidence than the other two and showed lower scientific competencies in identifying scientific issues than explaining phenomena scientifically and using scientific evidence. (4) Overall, the students did not show high interest in science, but they expressed higher interest in some topics which associated with their attitudes towards science education and science-related experiences outside of school. (5) The topics of unknown, mystery, danger, creativity are more appealing to most of the students. (6) Most students regarded self-actualization as the most important factor in their future career, however, due to the lack of career planning education, they failed to associate the self-actualization with the science-related occupations, which may lead to the low aspiration they showed to the job related to the environmental protection or manufacture. (7) Most students showed positive attitudes towards school science, they highly appreciated the benefits of learning science in school and the social value of the science and technology per se. However, overall, the science and technology view of those ninth graders are still sort of immature. Besides, it also indicated that, on average, there are statistically significant differences both in genders and among the students with different level of scientific competencies in terms of the interests in science, attitudes towards science and technology, science education, future science-related career, environmental issues, cience courses and science-related experiences outside of school. On average, the students with higher level scientific competencies showed statistically significant higher interest in science, more appreciation in the value of school science, science and technology as well as more aspiration to learn science.