An investigation into senior secondary school elective science students’ perception of their biology classroom environment and their attitude towards biology

Abstract

This study focused on elective science students’ perception of their biology classroom environment and their attitude towards biology in low and high academic achieving senior secondary schools in the Central Region of Ghana. Data were obtained with Biology Classroom Environment Questionnaire and Attitude towards Biology Questionnaire, administered on 356 third-year elective science students. This was done after the senior secondary schools that offer elective science programme had been categorized into low and high academic achieving schools based on their performance in Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination / West Africa Senior Secondary School Examinations for four years. Two third year intact classes were randomly selected from four schools under each category. One-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and a follow-up analysis of variance (ANOVA) conducted showed that though elective science students in both school categories had a low perception of their biology classroom environment, they differed in their perception of their biology classroom environments which was influenced by teacher support, cooperation and equity. The difference was in favour of students’ in low academic achieving schools. Mean scores and Independent sample t-tests also showed that students’ in both school types had a positive attitude towards biology. Spearman’s Correlation revealed that no relationship existed between elective science students’ perception and attitude in both school types. However, Spearman’s Correlation found a relationship among the sub scales of biology classroom environment. It was, therefore, suggested in the thesis that, the study be replicated by another researcher using the actual performance of the schools in biology to find out the out come of the study.