Abstract
Mathematics is an important nature exploration tool used by all natural sciences. So it is usual that mathematical calculations are part of school science education. But how are these calculations perceived by the learners themselves? What are their attitudes to this part of the teaching process? The answer to this question is important for any teacher who seeks to improve her/his teaching experience. The paper deals with the research of learners´ attitudes towards using mathematical calculations within physics lessons. Semantic differential for the sample of 230 primary and secondary school pupils was used in order to determine their attitudes towards this aspect and investigate the influence of grade and gender on the attitudes. The analysis of acquired data shows slightly negative learners´attitude to the mathematical calculations and some particular differences between grades and genders.
Highlights
The school education system should respond to the current intensive development of technology by developing and innovating the technical education of secondary school students, not just technical schools and universities
Overall average score obtained from the questionnaire was x = 3.73 (SD = 1.61), corresponding to relatively neutral attitude to the mathematical counting within physics lessons which is near to the negative one
The boysattitudes towards mathematical calculations within physics lessons is more positive than the girlsones, but in both cases their perception can be considered as a neutral close to the negative
Summary
The school education system should respond to the current intensive development of technology by developing and innovating the technical education of secondary school students, not just technical schools and universities. In many researches devoted to the perception of natural science subjects in primary and secondary schools, physics and interest in physics were perceived as the least negative (Osborne, Simon and Collins, 2003). Students‘ perception of physics as a challenging and little interesting subject was confirmed by a number of researches focused directly on students’ attitude to physics (Angell et al, 2004; Stefan and Ciomos, 2010). These findings led to follow-up research to identify factors that significantly affect students’ attitudes towards physics. One surprising finding was that the more frequent use of experiments in physics teaching had a statistically insignificant impact on the change in the student’s negative attitude to physics (Yesilyurt, 2004)
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