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Students Attitudes Towards Physics in Primary and Secondary Schools of Dire Dawa City Administration, Ethiopia
Students Attitudes Towards Physics in Primary and Secondary Schools of Dire Dawa City Administration, Ethiopia
WJERR
Research Article
INTRODUCTION
Extensive research has shown that a persons attitudes
are learned, as opposed to being inherited. Many factors
can influence a persons attitude, including previous
experiences and social influences. Attitude towards
science can be defined as, favorable or unfavorable
feelings about science as a school subject, (Craker,
2006), which is the definition used for this study. The type
of science subjects taken, previous science experiences,
science teachers, and various other factors can influence
these attitudes towards science (Morrell and Lederman,
1998). The impact of a students attitude towards science
especially physics is incredibly important not only in all
grades but also at University level for the development of
a country. Recent released work on the attitudes of
elementary school students done by (Weingurgh, 1998)
has shown that nearly fifty percent of students may lose
interest in science at the primary schools and mentioned
in (Craker, 2006).
Physics a challenging subject, mainly due to the learning
processes involved in understanding physics, which
Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
Grades
7
Male
43
Female
12
Total
55
8
9
11
7
15
9
5
6
3
12
21
12
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study adopted a survey method to collect the
required data. The study was conducted in 16 different
schools around Dire Dawa city in 2015 academic year
and they are highly ranked in their class. The motivation
questionnaires were distributed to the respondents who
come from junior and high school in Dire-Dawa
University. Students were required to answer the
questionnaires honestly within 30 minutes, arranged by
the physics department of Dire Dawa University staffs.
Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
Item
Good feeling toward physics
Enjoy class when it is going
understand other subject more than physics
better understanding of practical physics
Male
11
30
21
30
Grade 7
Female Total
12
23
12
42
10
31
12
42
Male
3
5
3
6
Grade 8
Female Total
5
8
5
10
4
7
5
11
Table 3. Male students feeling towards physics in higher schools, grade 9 and 11
Item
Good feeling toward physics
Enjoy class when it is going
understand other subject more than physics
better understanding of practical physics
Male
4
9
3
5
Grade 9
Female Total
3
7
3
12
2
5
3
8
Male
2
6
4
5
Grade 11
Female Total
0
2
2
8
1
5
1
6
Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
Grade 7
Item
Grade 8
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
Teaching methodology
Female
Total
Male
Grade 9
Item
Male
Grade 10
Female
Total
Teaching methodology
Item
I have a good feeling towards
physics subject
I only hate the calculation aspect
of physics
I usually enjoy when physics class
is going on
I understand other subject more
than physics
I do not see the importance of
physics in everyday life
I have better understanding of
practical physics
Our teacher does not used
interactive method of teaching
SD
38
%
38%
D
22
%
22%
A
28
%
28%
SA
12
%
12%
21
21%
48
48%
16
16%
15
15%
7%
21
21%
52
52%
20
20%
9%
39
3%
42
42%
10
19%
36
36%
53
53%
9%
2%
5%
27
27%
50
50%
18
18%
42
42%
41
41%
12
12%
5%
Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
Figure 3. Shows the overall students attitudes toward physics on their agreement and disagreement on the
respective questions. As an example the response for the first question shows, students have good feeling
toward physics. This Figure more explained quantitatively on Table 6
CONCLUSION
From the findings of this study, it was established that
students have high promising attitudes towards physics
oriented career subject. However, the poor performance
of students in physics was due to lack of information, lack
of self-confidence, inability to solve physics questions
correctly using the appropriate formula and not been able
to see the relevance of physics to the society.
Consequently, the good ones among the students show
that they have interest in physics class and thereby
developing positive attitude towards solving physics
problems. This means a positive attitude toward physics
leads to positive commitments to science that influence
lifelong and learning in science (Trumper, 2006) and
fulfills the government plan to train most of students in
science and technology. Since in physics education,
various methods and techniques can be used according
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank Dire-Dawa University
(DDU) for the financial support provided to publish this
paper on World Journal of Educational Research and
Reviews (WJERR), colleagues at Department of physics,
Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
RECOMMENDATIONS
It has been discovered that there are some reasons or
factors behind the negative attitudes of students towards
physics. It therefore becomes necessary that a positive
step should be taken towards modifying the factors in
other to ensure and maintain positive attitude and boost
students interest for physics. This prospective studies
should be conducted based on a small sample and within
the context to provide better understanding attitude of
students towards the subject and to create conducive
methodology which helps to improve their fear. Also, the
teachers and students have to adjust to new roles which
may lead to develop good classroom interaction which in
turn affect the nature of the relationship between the
teacher student interpersonal relationship and students
attitudes. Finally, we recommend Concept mapping
methodology to establish a bridge between how people
learn knowledge and sensible learning which helps to
develop a critical thinking about concept mapping and the
relations between different concepts for learning and
understanding science and physics. It also helps to
develop positive attitudes towards physics subject
(Karakuyu, 2010),
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Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia
Copyright: 2016 Sitotaw and Tadele. This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original author and source are cited.
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Students attitudes towards physics in primary and secondary schools of Dire Dawa City administration, Ethiopia