A Study On The Correlation Of Non-intellectual Factors And Academic Achievement In Physics Of High School Students In Weicheng District

With the proceeding of education reform, it has been found that students of high intellectual ability may not demonstrate excellent academic achievement; moreover they may not turn out to be well-educated and useful persons. The unsuccessful education practice under the guidance of knowledge-centered or intelligence-centered approach indicates that it is important to pay attention to the development of students'non-intellectual factors as well as to develop their intelligence. Non-intellectual factors refer to some psychological factors, which are not directly involved in but have direct restrictions to the cognitive process, like motivation, interest, affection, determination, quality and personality, etc. They are important components of overall quality of high school students; therefore, they are also important parts of quality education. In order for students to grow healthily in mind, it is necessary to cultivate and develop their non-intellectual factors. This paper begins with a discussion of the origin, concepts and development of non-intellectual factors, and then presents an investigation among high school students in Weicheng District. The qualitative and quantitative approaches are adopted in this study. The purpose of this paper is to get information on the present situation of the development of students'non-intellectual factors, to explore the correlation of non-intellectual factors and academic achievement in physics, and to offer some suggestions that may be of some help for physics teachers and the teaching reform and development in Weicheng District. Questionnaire and interviews were used to collect data, stratified random sampling was used to select subjects and SPSS12.0 for windows was implemented for the analysis of all the data obtained in the present research. The questionnaire is adapted from the Questionnaire of Non-intellectual Factors for Primary and High School Students edited by Shen Deli and a few modifications have been made in order to adjust to the investigation for high school students in Weicheng District. For a finer degree of discrimination, the five-point scale has been used instead of the original three-point one. An answer sheet has been designed for the convenience of data collection. There are eleven non-intellectual factors investigated. Each column corresponds to one factor, with the last column referring to the validity. 498 students in Weicheng District participated in the investigation and the findings can be summed up as follows:1. A slightly negative correlation between study anxiety and academic achievement in physics was observed; the correlation between interaction motivation and academic achievement was not significant; there is a significant positive correlation between each of the other nine non-intellectual factors and students'academic achievement in physics.2. Of the nine intellectual factors, a slightly positive correlation was found between academic achievement in physics and internal drive for excellence and dominance respectively; moderate positive correlation between academic achievement in physics and each of the other seven factors was observed.3. Some differences exist between students from different grades in terms of the correlation, the higher the grades, and the stronger the correlation.4. There are differences between male and female students of the same age group with regard to the development of non-intellectual factors: the male students present greater emotional stability than the female students; in term of other factors like study anxiety, responsibility and perseverance, etc., there is either greater development in female students or there is no significant difference between the males and females.5. The development of non-intellectual factors tends to decrease as students age; except study anxiety, other factors of students from Senior Grade 2 and Senior Grade 3 tend to become stable.6. Non-intellectual factors of high school students in Weicheng District are mainly related to two aspects: affection and emotion.