Abstract:

Education of Science plays a critical role as political priority as well as economic and social requirements, in order to face scientific development challenges. Achievement on science education plays and positive attitudes toward science constitutes a crucial challenge for formal education. Several studies indicate close relationships between students´ attitudes, cognitive abilities and academic achievement (Candeias et al., 2007; Tytler & Osborne, 2012).

The main purpose from this study is to analyze the impact of student’s attitudes towards natural science and their reasoning abilities on academic achievement on that school subject, among Portuguese 7th grade students using the data collected during Project- Academic Performance and Development: a longitudinal study on the effects of school transitions in Portuguese students.

Participants were 313 students: 151 boys (48,2%) and 162 girls (51,8%) aged 11 to 15 years old (µ=12,48±0,61).The attitude data were collected using the Attitude towards Sciences (ATC) (Neto et al., 2013) and the Reasoning Test Battery (RTB) (Almeida & Lemos, 2006) was used to assess the students reasoning abilities. Achievement was measured using the students’ quarterly (nine-week) grades in the physics and chemistry subject. The ATPCQ allows the assessment of three attitude dimensions: affective, instrumental and behavioral. The RTB assesses five reasoning dimensions: numerical, verbal, spatial, abstract and mechanic.

Multiple regression stepwise analyses (R) and standardized regression coefficients (β), calculated with IBM SPSS Statistics 21 software, were used to investigate the relationships between the three attitude dimensions towards Natural Sciences and the five reasoning dimensions and achievement in each of the three school terms.

Significant models emerged in all three terms (1st term: R2Adj=0.288; 2nd term: R2Adj=0.240; 3rd term: R2Adj=0.253). All the dimensions of both variables studied were significant predictor variables β values ranging between 0,405 and 0.115. The models obtained from the use of both variables were always stronger accounting for higher proportions of student’s grade variations.

The results show that ATC and RTB had a significantly positive, relationship with student’s achievement in natural sciences, indicating that both attitudinal and cognitive variables should be taken into account on education of science as well as in educative intervention.

Keywords:

Attitude toward school science, reasoning abilities, achievement, high school, education of science.