New Perspectives in Science Education

The purpose of this study is to explore the factorial structure of a questionnaire on attitudes towards Physics and Chemistry in academic artistic contexts and to study the relation of attitudes with sex and social context. The sample consists of 185 key-stage 3 students of two music schools (A and B), located in different social contexts. The sample of school A consists of 67 year 8 students (40 males and 27 females). The sample of school B consists of 117 key-stage 3 students, from which 41 were enrolled in year 8 (16 males and 25 females). A validated questionnaire was used [1]. Factor analyses (generalized least squares method with varimax rotation) were conducted. The reliability scores were excellent (total sample, α=.95; year 8 sample, α=.93). The factor analysis retrieved four factors for the total sample, which were named after their content: (i) behaviours and achievement; (ii) cognitions and values; (iii) feelings about Physics and Chemistry; and (iv) feelings about studying Physics and Chemistry. The analysis of the year 8 sample retrieved six statistical factors, but the two new factors only included three items, reason why this solution was dropped. Music students seem to have negative attitudes towards Physics and Chemistry. Items associated with feelings about studying and behaviours showed lower means, while items associated with feelings about the subject and about values showed higher and positive means. Students seemed to acknowledge the social and pragmatic value of the knowledge and to enjoy the subject but also that they don’t like and considered difficult to study it and obtain good grades. Almost none significant differences were found based on sex and context. Implications include the discussion about the influence of variables other than sex or social context [2] to understand the formation and change of students’ attitudes. The current findings seem to encourage science teachers in contexts where students are strongly committed with other subjects to progressively move from an education paradigm that stresses the need to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics to a paradigm that includes approaches based on students’ interests, such as arts, in order to teach science.