The Investigation of Czech Lower Secondary School Pupils Toward Science Subjects

Abstract

The contribution is focused on the investigation of the Czech lower secondary school pupils toward science
subjects (biology, chemistry, physics and geography). The curriculum of the Czech Republic included these
subjects in the group call “Man and Nature”. The published studies showed, the pupils’ attitudes toward
science subjects are relatively negative. This kind of subjects belongs among the least favorite. The physics
and chemistry ranked very often at as the least favorite. In or study was the questionnaire with 25 Likert
type items used. Only for the subject geography was used 27 items. It is due to the position of geography,
this subject is standing between science and social subjects, so the character of several items was different
from the items for other science subjects. The construct validity was established by factor analysis, which
divided items into 4 (geography, chemistry and physics) or 3 (biology) dimensions. The dimension are not
homogenous, some items are in other dimension in one subject and in other dimension in second subject.
The pupils perceived the biology as the most positive and chemistry and physics are perceived as the least
favorite subjects. The conclusion contains implications for further research.