Students’ attitude towards science in lower secondary classes : Comparison across regions

摘要

Science education is an area of interest for long and has gained a lot of attention from science educators. Keeping this in view, the current study explored the attitude of grade VI-VIII students towards science in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. This research study was conducted as part of a 5-year project titled ‘USAID-LINKS to learning: Education Support to Pakistan’ (USAID-EDLINKS). A 5-point rating scale, Science Attitude Scale (SAS) was adapted from previous research. SAS has 32 items arranged under five constructs: learning science in school, self-concept in science, science outside of school, future participation in science and importance of science. SAS was administered to 1458 students, from twelve randomly selected schools from the two provinces. The result exhibited positive students’ attitude towards science, irrespective of province. However, comparison across regions favoured students from the province of Sindh as compared to their counterparts in Balochistan. A similar pattern was observed for all constructs except future participation in science, where both regions have exhibited a similar trend. The study concludes that students need to be engaged actively in science learning so that their positive attitude towards the discipline can be sustained and improved further as they grow older.