Students’ attitudes toward school chemistry: The effect of interaction between gender and grade level

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of interaction between gender and grade level on secondary school students’ attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject across Grades 9-11, in Turkey. There are two features of this study that make it noteworthy. First, students’ attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject were measured by the means of a multidimensional scale (enjoyment and importance of chemistry) with excellent reliability coefficient which enables more accurate results related to the whole picture. Second, instead of treating gender and grade level as separate variables, the present study investigated the interaction between gender and grade level through two-way MANOVA. In this way, the study provided more accurate results, since literature confirmed that gender and grade level can interact with each other (George, 2006); that is, female or male students may have different attitudes toward chemistry as time passes.

The findings of the present study cannot be compared directly with the findings of previous studies since the number of researchers who deal with the effect of interaction between gender and grade level is very scarce. From the literature reviewed, only the study of Cheung (2009) introduced information related to the effects of interaction between gender and grade level on secondary school students’ attitudes toward chemistry. Cheung (2009) found gender differences were limited only to the theory lessons subscale for Secondary 4 and 5. Hong Kong data also revealed that not all of the male students’ scores on the chemistry laboratory work subscale showed decline from junior grades to senior grades. The results of the present study are in harmony with Cheung’s findings in such a way that males’ scores on the enjoyment and importance of chemistry dimensions followed a decline from Grades 9 to 10. On the enjoyment and importance of chemistry dimensions, female scores, on the other hand, showed growth from Grades 9 to 10. To conclude, this study points out that there is a sex difference across Grades 9 to 10 on the enjoyment and importance dimensions of attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject.

Overall, the findings of this study suggest that the educational objective of developing positive attitudes toward chemistry lesson is not fully achieved in Turkey. The average mean scores of females is about 33 and males is approximately 31 (see Table 6) out of 50 in terms of the enjoyment of chemistry. Moreover, the average mean scores of females is about 17 and males is approximately 16 (see Table 6) out of 25 with respect to the importance of chemistry thus both can be treated as just above average.

According to the findings of this study, it can be implied that Turkish secondary school science program should take gender differences into account. Accordingly, chemistry teachers should organize classroom activities on the basis of gender differences; that is, each student in the classroom should have a chance to develop positive attitudes toward learning chemistry. This was a causal-comparative study and cross-sectional in nature. A longitudinal research can be designed in order to evaluate the interaction effect between gender and grade level on attitudes toward chemistry for further research. Moreover, further research can be conducted related to the interaction effect between gender and grade level on other branches of science to internalize the situation in science. The sampling method (that is, convenience sampling) and the nature of the attitude scale (that is, Likert type) are the limitations of the paper and further research can be performed through random samples and other types of measurement scales.