Students' Attitudes Towards Chemistry: On The Gender And .
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 541Proceedings of the 6th International Seminar on Science Education (ISSE 2020)Students’ Attitudes Towards Chemistry: On theGender and Grades PerspectiveElginda Yusa Arniezca1,* Jaslin Ikhsan21Master of Chemistry Education, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta,Indonesia2Department of Chemistry Education, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciencse, Universitas NegeriYogyakarta, Indonesia*Corresponding author. Email: elgindaarniezca@gmail.comABSTRACTThis descriptive research with a quantitative approach aims to describe the differences in students' attitudes towardchemistry based on gender and grade level. The participants were 186 senior high school students in KalimantanBarat, Indonesia, selected by convenience sampling technique. The data collection tool used was the Likert-scaleAttitudes Toward Chemistry Questionnaire by Salta that has been validated and proven reliable using PearsonCorrelation and Cronbach Alpha. The questionnaire consisted of 23 items, including aspects of the importance ofchemistry, difficulty of chemistry, the interest of chemistry, and usefulness of chemistry in the future career. MannWhitney analysis was used to describe the effect of gender and grades on attitudes toward chemistry. The resultshowed that students had a neutral attitude toward chemistry. There are significant differences in attitudes towardschemistry between male and female students in all aspects. The differences in students' attitudes towards chemistrybased on grades only exist in the aspect of the importance of chemistry. The teacher should motivate and enhancechemistry learning to increase students' positive attitudes toward chemistry. Further research is required to ensurethe cause of the difference between male and female students' attitudes.Keywords: Attitudes toward chemistry, Gender, Grades1. INTRODUCTIONChemistry is one of the subjects in the high schoolcurriculum. Assessment in the chemistry curriculumfocuses not only on the cognitive domain but also onthe psychomotor and affective domains. One of theaffective domains is attitude. Attitude is as importantas academic achievement, so developing students'positive attitudes towards chemistry is necessary.Unfortunately, research has shown that chemistry isless attractive to students of all ages [1].Attitudes are defined as emotional and mentalentities that cause someone's action towards an objector subject [2]. Oluwatelure and Oloruntegbe [3] statedthat attitude is a concept that arises from an effort toexplain regularities in individual behavior. Its qualityis measured from the results of evaluations made by aperson. Attitudes, as part of the psychological, areexpressed in specific behaviors with several likes ordislikes [4]. Attitudes towards chemistry involvestudents' tendency to respond to chemistry based onthe views and images they develop as a result of theirexperiences during learning [5]. In the classroom,teachers can assess students' attitudes by observingtheir behavior. Students who consistently finish theirtask and actively ask questions during chemistrylessons have a positive attitude in studying chemistry.Students' beliefs and attitudes can support or hinderlearning [6].Many factors can support students' attitudes inkstudying chemistry. Teachers' enthusiasm, theeffectiveness of teaching, and the presentation ofexperiments can influence students' positive attitudestoward chemistry [7]. So, teacher attitudes toward thesubject are essential to students' learning process.Other studies report that computer assistedintervention (CAI) based learning (including webbased learning) positively increasing students'attitudes toward chemistry [8] [9] [10]. Students whostudied chemistry using computer simulations have ahigher motivation to study chemistry, in terms ofdesire and pleasure, and their capability to relate whatCopyright 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license 9
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 541they learned to daily activities. Teaching methodsusing computers have several limitations, so the use ofcomputers alone cannot directly affect attitudes. Theuse of computers needs to be integrated with otherlearning models to increase student attitudeseffectively.Adesoji [11] summarizes several factors related tostudents' attitude toward chemistry: teacher attitudes,teaching method, students' cognitive style, parents'influence, gender, age, career interest, and social viewof chemistry. Hofstein [12] suggests that futurechemistry teaching and learning developments shouldnotice students' gender, motivation patterns, andlearning styles. Each student has distinctionpreferences for other teaching techniques. Yunus [13]stated that doing chemical experiments in thelaboratory made students show positive attitudestoward chemistry. Students' negative attitude is causedby the many and varied chemistry learning materialsto be studied in a short time.Many studies develop attitudes toward thechemistry scale. For example, Demircioğlu [14] set anattitude test item towards chemistry and divided theminto two categories, liking chemistry lessons andcareer plans in chemistry. Liking chemistry deals withstudents 'reactions to chemistry learning activities,while career plans deal with chemistry in students'goals. Tosun [15] suggests that attitudes towardschemistry consist of four subscales, such as learningchemistry in theory, liking work in chemistrylaboratories, evaluative belief in chemistry lessons inschools, and behavioral tendencies to learn chemistry.To measure student attitudes towards chemistry,Eskandar [16] divides the components into two:interest in chemistry and self-confidence in learningchemistry. Meanwhile, Salta [17] developed anattitude test towards chemistry based on four concepts:difficulty in chemistry lessons, interest in chemistrylessons, the use of chemistry lessons for students'future careers, and the importance of chemistry forstudents' lives. Different opinions were expressed byXu, Vullafane, and Lewis [4], who categorizedattitudes into three components: the effectivecomponent, the cognitive component, and thebehavioral component. The affective component isrelated to the emotional response that expressesstudents' level of liking or dislike towards chemistrylessons. The cognitive component is related to theevaluation, which consists of an individual's belief andknowledge of chemistry. The behavioral componentrelates to a person's behavioral tendency to act onchemistry.The research related to attitudes towards chemistryhas been carried out in many countries around theworld. However, in Indonesia, especially in WestKalimantan region, it has never been done. This is thebasic reason for conducting this study. This study alsodescribed how attitudes predict student behavior in thefuture towards school subjects and career trends.Attitude could predict future trends, especially if thereis a direct interaction between attitudes and students.Behavior can be formed from attitude. For example,positive attitudes are disposed to show a pleasingreaction, and negative attitudes are disposed to showan unpleasing reaction. The primary purpose of thisstudy is to describe attitudes toward chemistry of highschool students. This study also describes thedifferences between gender and grade level.To describe students’ attitudes toward chemistry,this study has built up three research questions asfollows:RQ1: How students’ attitudes toward chemistrylearning in terms of four aspects?RQ2: Do male and female students have difference inattitudes?RQ3: Do 10th grader and 11th grader students havedifference in attitudes?2. METHODThe research methodology used was a descriptivestudy with quantitative approach. Students’ opinionsthrough chemistry learning and chemistry career werecollected using a questionnaire and reporteddescriptively. This research was conducted in 2020,and the data was collected in July of the same year.2.1. ParticipantsThis study’s participant was 186 students thatconsist of 61 males and 125 females selected byconvenience sampling. Convenience sampling is anonprobability or nonrandom sampling technique inwhich the target population members meet the specificrequirements, such as easily accessible, geographicproximity, willingness at certain times, or willingnessto become participants. It also refers to researchsubjects from the population that are easily accessibleto the researcher [18].2.2. Data Collection ToolThe attitude questionnaire towards chemistry(ATC) consists of 23 items (13 positives and 10negatives), representing four aspects related to310
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume ire uses a Likert-scale with 5 pointsarranged in the order of "strongly agree", "agree","neither agree nor disagree", "disagree", and "stronglydisagree". The questionnaire items appraised students'attitudes toward chemistry by the importance ofchemistry course, the difficulty of chemistry course,interest in chemistry course, and the usefulness ofchemistry on students’ future career. The ATCquestionnaire was adopted from Penn [19], which wasfirst developed by Salta and Tzougraki [14]. Someminor changes were made to the ATC questionnaire.For example, the statement "chemical symbols are likeChinese to me" was changed to "chemical symbols arehard for me to understand". The validity test usingPearson Correlation shows that all items weredeclared valid, while the reliability test usingcronbach alpha results was 0.83, which is consideredacceptable.3.92Mean Score3.42.97The Importance ofchemistry course2.86The difficulty ofchemistry courseThe interest ofchemistryThe usefulness ofchemistry for futurecareerFigure 1 Mean score of students’ attitudes toward chemistry2.3. Data AnalysisFor RQ1, the average score of students' attitudestowards chemistry in each aspect was calculated first,then interpreted in a negative, neutral, and positiveattitude. For RQ2 and RQ3, the analysis used asinferential statistics. Mann-Whitney analysis was usedto describe gender and grades level differencesbecause the sampling technique was non-probabilityand included in non-parametric statistics.3. RESULT AND DISCUSSIONAttitudes Toward Chemistry (ATC) questionnaireis the scale to assess students' attitudes towardchemistry. Figure 1 displays a summary of senior highschool students' scores on four aspects of attitudestoward chemistry. The result showed that studentsassume chemistry lessons were not difficult and noteasy to understand (neutral attitude). Their attitudesconcerning the interest of chemistry lesson andusefulness for their future career is also neutral, butthey realized that the chemistry lesson is essential intheir life (positive attitude).This finding was different from other studies. Forexample, Bennett [20] and Cheung [1] found thatstudents had a slightly positive attitude towardchemistry. The same finding was found in a study ofSalta and Tzougraki [14], as stated that students hadneutral attitudes toward chemistry. In detail, the resultof our study shows that students in aspect "difficultyof chemistry course", and "interest of chemistry" wereperceived neutral. Students recognize that chemistry isessential for their lives, but working in chemistry inthe future is still a consideration. Students' interest inchemistry tends to be neutral. It may be because thechemical material presented is too theoretical duringthe learning process [21]. The neutral attitude inaspects difficulty, the interest of chemistry, and theusefulness of chemistry in future career could becaused by the curriculum in Indonesia that is factcentred, not connecting the relationship betweenchemistry and real life. The pandemic situation forcedchemistry learning to be carried out online without ahands-on practicum in the laboratory. Laboratoryactivities had a significant contribution to shaping andimproving student attitudes toward chemistry [12].3.1. Attitudes Toward Chemistry Accordingto GenderTable 1 provides the mean score and standarddeviation for the four aspects according to students’311
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 541gender. Mann-Whitney was used to analyzedifferences in attitudes toward chemistry on a maleand female student.From the findings of data review, it can be seenthat Sig. 0.05 which indicates that there was nosignificant difference in difficulty, interest, andusefulness aspects. In contrast, in the aspect ofimportance, there was a significant difference betweenclass X and class XI students (Sig. 0.05). The resultshows that 10th graders in the “the importance ofchemistry” aspect have a score lower than 11th graders.Nevertheless, the aspects difficulty of chemistry,interest of chemistry and usefulness of chemistryshows the opposite result. This study's finding cannotbe directly compared with previous studies'conclusions since the number of researchers dealingonly with grade level in importance, difficulty,interest, and usefulness of chemistry aspects ofattitudes toward chemistry was sporadic. However,there are informative research relevant to the influenceof grade level and gender, on the various dimensionsof attitude toward chemistry. For example, Kubiatko[21] reported that female students had more positiveattitudes than male students in the dimension"relevance of chemistry", which similar to aspect"importance of chemistry" in our study. On the otherhand, Can [23] found that the students’ mean scorefluctuated. The 9th graders had the highest mean score,then decreased in 10th grade, and increase again at 11thgrade.Based on table 1, the influence of categoricalvariable (gender) there were significantly differentbetween males and females in importance, difficulty,interest, and usefulness of attitudes toward chemistry(P 0,004; P 0,004; P 0,009; and P 0,022 wasless than 0,05). The mean score of female students ishigher than male students, so it is possible to see thatfemales had more positive attitudes than males.Several studies report that boys had a more positiveattitude, while other studies have found more positiveattitudes for girls. This study's result was relevant toCheung [1] that girls had more like studying chemistrythan did boys. These gender differences could bebecause students are included in the low-achievinggroup of students [22].3.2. Attitudes Towards Chemistry Accordingto GradesTable 2 provides the mean score and standarddeviation for the four aspects according to students’grades. Mann-Whitney was used to analyze differencesin attitudes toward chemistry on 10th grade and 11thgrade student.Table 1. Descriptive statistic of attitudes toward chemistry by genderMale (n 61)AspectsFemale (n .50.022MeanSum ofMeanSum ofRankRankRankRankThe importance of chemistry77.454724.5101.33The difficulty of chemistry course77.144705.5Interest in chemistry course78.78Usefulness of chemistry for future80.71careerTable 2. Descriptive statistic of attitudes toward chemistry by grades10th (n 109)Aspects11th (n 15MeanSum ofMeanSum ofRankRankRankRankThe importance of chemistry86.929474.598.19The difficulty of chemistry course98.1910702.5Interest in chemistry course94.85Usefulness of chemistry for future96.79career312
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 5414. CONCLUSIONBased on this study's results, it can be concludedthat students have a positive attitude towardschemistry in terms of the importance of chemistry,while in other aspects, tends to be neutral. Besides,there are significant differences in attitudes towardschemistry among male students and female students inall aspects, so it can be concluded that genderdifferences affect students' perceptions of chemistry.Furthermore, the differences in students' attitudestowards chemistry based on grade level only exist inthe importance of chemistry, while there was nodifference in other aspects. From this study's finding,the teacher should motivate and enhance chemistrylearning to increase students' positive attitudes towardchemistry. For the distinction in attitudes in gender,further research is required to ensure the cause.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe author would like to thank all those who havebeen involved and helped in this research.REFERENCES[1] D. Cheung, Developing A Scale to MeasureStudents’ Attitudes toward Chemistry Lessons,International Journal of Science Education31(16)(2009)2185–2203.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690802189799[2] R.M. Perloff, The Dynamics of Persuasion:Communication and Attitudes in The TwentyFirst Century, Routledge London, 2016.[3] T.A. Oluwatelure, K.O Oloruntegbe, Effect ofParental Involvement on Students’ Attitude andPerformance in Science, African Journal ofMicrobiology Research 4 (2010) 1 – 9. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5897/AJMR.9000274[4] X. Xu, S.M. Villafane, J.E Lewis, ual Knowledge and Achievement:Structural Equation Model Analysis, ChemistryEducation Research and Practice 14 (2013) 188 –200. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C3RP20170H[5] A. Kahveci, Assesing High School Students’Attitudes toward Chemistry with A ShortenedSemantic Differential, Chemistry EducationResearch and Practice 16 (2015) 283 – 292. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1039/C4RP00186A[6] P.O. Yara, Students Attitude toward Mathematicsand Academic Achievement in Some SelectedSecondary Schools in Southwestern Nigeria,Europian Journal of Scientific Research 36(3)(2009) 336 – 341.[7] C.F. Bauer, What Students Think: CollegeStudents Describe Their High School ChemistryClass, Science Teacher 69(1) (2002) 52 – 55.[8] H. Ozmen, The Influence of lUnderstanding of Chemical Bonding AndAttitude toward Chemistry: A Case for Turkey,Computer & Education 51(1) (2008) 423 – 002[9] E.E. Olakanmi, The Effect of A Web-BasedComputer Simulation on Students’ ConceptualUnderstanding of Rate of Reaction and Attitudetowards Chemistry, Journal of Baltic ScienceEducation 14(5) (2015) 627 – 640.[10] M. Frailich, M. Kesner, A. Hofstein, TheInfluence of Web-Based Chemistry Learning , Research in Science &Technological Education 25(2) (2007) 179 – 11] F.A Adesoji, Managing Students’ Attitudetowards Science through Problem-SolvingInstructional Strategy, The Anthropologist 20073.2008.11891024[12] A. Hofstein, R.M. Naaman, High SchoolStudents’ Attitude toward and Interest inLearning Chemistry. Educación Química 22(2)(2011) 90 – 102.[13] F.W. Yunus, Z.M. Ali, Urban students’ attitudetowards learning chemistry, in: Procedia Socialand Behavioral Science, vol. 68, Elsevier,Amsterdam, 2012, pp. 295–304. 4] G. Demircioğlu, A. Aslan, M. Yadigaroğlu,Exploratory Factor Analysis Study for The Scaleof High School Students’ Attitudes Towards313
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 541Chemistry, International Journal on New Trendsin Education and Their Implications 5 (2012) 38–45.[15] C. Tosun, E. Senocak, The Effects of ProblemBased Learning on Metacognitive Awareness andAttitudes toward Chemistry of ProspectiveTeachers with Different Academic Backgrounds,Australian Journal of Teacher Education te.2013v38n3.2[16] F. Eskandar, M. Bayrami, S. Vahedi, V.A.AAnsar, The Effect of Instructional Analogies withLogical Thinking Ability on Achievement andAttitude toward Chemistry, Chemistry EducationResearch and Practice 14(3) (2013) 566–575.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C3RP00036B[17] K. Salta, C. Tzougraki, Attitudes towardChemistry Among 11th Grade Students in HighSchools in Greece, Science Education ce.10134[18] K. Saumere, The SAGE Encyclopedia ofQualitative Research Methods Volume 1&2,Sage California, 2008.[19] M. Penn,UniversityU. Ramnarain, South AfricanStudents’ Attitudes TowardsChemistry Learning in A Virtually SimulatedLearning Environment, Chemistry EducationResearch and Practice 20(4) (2019) 699–709.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C9RP00014C[20] J. Bennett, The Development and Use of AnInstrument to Assess Students’ Attitude to TheStudy of Chemistry, International Journal ofScience Education 23(8) (2001) 833 – 845. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690010006554[21] M. Kubiatko, B. Kristyna, P. Pavol, Pupils’Attitudes toward Chemistry in Two Types ofCzech Schools, Eurasia Journal of MathematicsScience and Technology Education 13(6) asia.2017.01239a[22] A.R. Brandiet, X. Xu, S.L. Bretz, J.E Lewis,Diagnosing Changes In Attitude in First-YearCollege Chemistry Students with A ShortenedVersion Of Bauer’s Semantic Differential,Chemistry Education Research and 0.1039/C1RP90032C[23] B.H. Can, Y. Boz, A Cross-Age Study on HighSchool Students’ Attitude toward Chemistry,International Journal on New Trends inEducation and Their Implications 3(3) (2012) 82–89.314
laboratory made students show positive attitudes toward chemistry. Students' negative attitude is caused by the many and varied chemistry learning materials to be studied in a short time. Many studies develop attitudes toward the chemistry scale. For example, Demircioğlu [14] set an attitude test item towards chemistry and divided them
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