This article offers a review of the major literature about attitudes to science and its implications over the past 20 years. It argues that the continuing decline in numbers choosing to study science at the point of choice requires a research focus on students’ attitudes to science if the nature of the problem is to be understood and remediated. Starting from a consideration of what is meant by attitudes to science, it considers the problems inherent to their measurement, what is known about students’ attitudes towards science and the many factors of influence such as gender, teachers, curricula, cultural and other variables. The literature itself points to the crucial importance of gender and the quality of teaching. Given the importance of the latter we argue that there is a greater need for research to identify those aspects of science teaching that make school science engaging for pupils. In particular, a growing body of research on motivation offers important pointers to the kind of classroom environment and activities that might raise pupils’ interest in studying school science and a focus for future research.

Attitudes towards science: A review of the literature and its implications

The laboratory has been given a central and distinctive role in science education, and science educators have suggested that rich benefits in learning accrue from using laboratory activities. Twenty years have been elapsed since we published a frequently cited, critical review of the research on the school science laboratory (Hofstein & Lunetta, Rev. Educ. Res.52(2), 201–217, 1982). Twenty years later, we are living in an era of dramatic new technology resources and new standards in science education in which learning by inquiry has been given renewed central status. Methodologies for research and assessment that have developed in the last 20 years can help researchers seeking to understand how science laboratory resources are used, how students' work in the laboratory is assessed, and how science laboratory activities can be used by teachers to enhance intended learning outcomes. In that context, we take another look at the school laboratory in the light of contemporary practices and scholarship. This analysis examines scholarship that has emerged in the past 20 years in the context of earlier scholarship, contemporary goals for science learning, current models of how students construct knowledge, and information about how teachers and students engage in science laboratory activities. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed88:28–54, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/.sce10106

https://gpquae.iqm.unicamp.br/gtexperimentacao.pdf

The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century

On Educational psychology: A cognitive view.

(1978). Pupils and Paradigms: a Review of Literature Related to Concept Development in Adolescent Science Students. Studies in Science Education: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 61-84.

Pupils and Paradigms: a Review of Literature Related to Concept Development in Adolescent Science Students

The difficulties of learning science are related to the nature of science itself and to the methods by which science is customarily taught without regard to what is known about children's learning. An information processing model is proposed to guide thinking and research in this area.

Why is science difficult to learn? Things are seldom what they seem

Chemistry is regarded as a difficult subject for students. The difficulties may lie in human learning as well as in the intrinsic nature of the subject. Concepts form from our senses by noticing common factors and regularities and by establishing examples and non-examples. This direct concept formation is possible in recognising, for instance, metals or flammable substances, but quite impossible for concepts like ‘element’ or ‘compound’, bonding types, internal crystal structures and family groupings such as alcohols, ketones or carbohydrates. The psychology for the formation of most of chemical concepts is quite different from that of the ‘normal’ world. We have the added complication of operating on and interrelating three levels of thought: the macro and tangible, the sub micro atomic and molecular, and the representational use of symbols and mathematics. It is psychological folly to introduce learners to ideas at all three levels simultaneously. Herein lies the origins of many misconceptions. The trained chemist can keep these three in balance, but not the learner. This paper explores the possibilities, for the curriculum, of a psychological approach in terms of curricular order, the gradual development of concepts, the function of laboratory work and the place of quantitative ideas. Chemical education research has advanced enough to offer pointers to the teacher, the administrator and the publisher of how our subject may be more effectively shared with our students. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. Eur.: 2000, 1, 9- 15]

Teaching of chemistry - logical or psychological?

When students from Scottish schools were surveyed 15 years ago about their difficulties in learning biology, two main topic areas stood out as high in perceived difficulty: water transport in plants and genetics. In the interim, curricular changes have been made in which cognisance was taken of these findings. The present study was a revisit to ascertain the changes in student perception. The water transport problems are found to have largely disappeared, but the genetics difficulties have remained. This paper tries to locate the root causes of this by interviewing students and teachers, and by consulting examiners' reports. Pointers emerge which are capable of leading to possible solutions.

Revisiting learning difficulties in biology

The word association test is one of the commonest and oldest educational tools for investigating the cognitive structure of learners. In this present study, a word association test was used to map the cognitive structure of areas of elementary genetics in first-year biology students. In order to map the structures, relatedness coefficient values and response frequencies were used. The results showed that the students generated many ideas related to given key words. However, they did not appear to see the overall picture as a network of related ideas. Implications for using the word association test in the classroom are discussed.

Alex H. Johnstone

Papers

Why is science difficult to learn? Things are seldom what they seem

Teaching of chemistry - logical or psychological?

Revisiting learning difficulties in biology

Investigation of students' cognitive structure in elementary genetics through word association tests

Chemistry Teaching: Science or Alchemy?.