Improving Nanjing High School Students' Attitudes towards Chemistry Lessons: An Exploratory Study

Attitudes, like academic achievement, are important outcomes of science education. Recently, research on students' attitudes toward school science has become one of the priorities of curriculum reform in many countries and an important topic for science education research. Unfortunately, students generally have a negative attitude toward school science. Researchers worldwide are concerned about the differences in student attitudes across grade levels and between the two genders.;This study used mixed research methods and selected a sample of high school chemistry students in Nanjing as the context for research. An existing measurement scale for assessing student attitudes toward chemistry lessons was first revised. Then the data collected by the revised scale were analyzed to examine the effects of gender and grade level on student attitudes. The interaction effect between gender and grade level was also investigated. The various factors affecting student attitudes toward chemistry lessons were identified through interviews, direct observations of classes, and analysis of documents. Finally, a chemistry class was selected as a case to conduct a three-week classroom intervention to improve girls' attitudes toward school chemistry and narrow the gender differences in student attitudes.;The study revealed that the differences in student attitudes on the four subscales were statistically Significant: attitude toward laboratory work; attitude toward chemistry theory lessons and behavioral tendency to learn chemistry; beliefs about the importance of chemistry lessons; and liking for learning specific chemical knowledge. The interaction effect between grade level and gender on the second subscale was statistically Significant. Furthermore, various factors affected students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons, including the college entrance examination, teachers, textbooks, and academic performance. The case study found that girls' attitudes toward school chemistry can be improved by using two teaching strategies: (1) single gender grouping in chemistry laboratory class, and (2) STS instruction in chemistry theory lessons. These findings can deepen chemistry education researchers' understanding of student attitudes toward school chemistry and provide high school chemistry teachers with some useful suggestions for enhancing their students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons.