Do Social Chemophobic Attitudes Influence the Opinions of Secondary School Students?

摘要

For some time now, chemistry has not had a good reputation in society. The population identifies this discipline with industries and pollution, while its positive contributions are usually ignored. This fear of chemistry may affect the opinion of society toward not only science, but also the scientific work itself. To assess the prevalence of this social phenomenon among them, a group of 351 preuniversity students was surveyed and the answers provided were analyzed based on their characteristics (age, sex, and location). The results support the usefulness of the developed questionnaire and show that there already exists a tendency to reject everything “containing chemicals” or that “is not natural” at these ages. An influence of the students' sociocultural environment and years of schooling is noticed concerning the ideas they manifest. In light of this situation, the potential implications for the learning and teaching processes of chemistry are commented on.