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An Investigation On Secondary School Students' Attitude Toward Physics Learning

Posted on:2004-04-24Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J H GuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2167360095462487Subject:Curriculum and pedagogy
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It is well known that civic scientific literacy is an important factor in evaluating national power and every country puts more and more emphasis on it. A general investigation of civic scientific literacy was hold in China in 2001.The result shows that the percentage of the people who has scientific literacy has risen to 1.4%. However, it is much smaller than that of advanced countries . The goal of science education .including physics education is to heighten all students' scientific literacy, but why are so many students with so many years' science education still science illiterates? We should reflect on science education, especially students' attitude towards learning physics. Lifelong learning and lifelong education are the strongest ictus in this century. The right attitude towards learning is the premise of lifelong education. Otherwise, some people who have high degree may still be functional illiterate. The attitude towards learning is also outcome of learning, a nonintellective factor and the motive force of learning. For all the reasons above, we should rethink the attitude towards learning physics.1 have compiled the questionnaire of attitude towards physics learning with the guidance of my teachers and the help of my classmates, On basis of the theory of attitude and the physics education and the realities of the physics instruction. The questionnaire has three dimensionalities, including attitude (feeling, understanding, behavior), the kind of physical knowledge (theory and experiment ) and the instruction material (is tested or is not tested ). It has established 8 indexes based on these three dimensionalities, including the feeling of learning theory, the understanding of learning theory, the behavior of learning theory which should be tested, the behavior of learning theory which should not be tested, the feeling of learning experiment, the understanding of learning experiment, the behavior of learning experiment which should be tested, the behavior of learning experiment which should not be tested. The questionnaire is made up of 42 questions which respectively belong to the 8 indexes. All the questions are concretlized, made with exact words and neutrality tone.Middle school students' attitudes towards physics learning were investigated with the questionnaire designed by myself. The samples consist of students from 10 classes in 5 grades from Grade 2 of Junior School to Grade 3 of Senior School. We have got 436 useful questionnaire papers and analysed with SPSS. The survey tells us four findings. Firstly, the general tendency of each index goes up at first, and then down and the turning point is at Grade 1 of Senior School. Secondly, on the whole, the higher the grades are, the less correlation coefficient of each index and students' physics scores is. Thirdly, the indexes of experiment have nothing with physics scores. Fourthly, the average of boys' physics scores is higher than that of girls', but the difference is not enough high to significant level.The explanation of the finding focuses on the phenomenon of "trust answers, no trustexperiments" and the gender differences in learning physics. The functions of experiment are classified into educational functions, instructional functions and cognitive functions. The fact that we do not regard cognitive functions of experiment as important in theory causes the phenomenon of "trust answers, no trust experiments", so that teachers do not put emphasis on experiment in practice. There are gender differences in learning physics. What causes the gender differences are not the difference of physiology or intelligence , but the differences of cognitive styles and the Pygmalion' effect on gender expectation in physics learning.
Keywords/Search Tags:attitude towards physics learning, questionnaire of attitude towards physics learning, the functions of experiment, gender differences.
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