Spanish students’ attitudes towards sciences in the PISA 2006 assessment

Abstract

Our aims are to describe Spanish students’ attitudes towards sciences, paying special attention to the differences between autonomous regions, and to analyse the contribution of attitudes to the discrimination among students of regions with different achievement levels in sciences. Methodologically, the study implies the secondary analysis of data obtained from the PISA 2006 assessment, promoted by OECD. In our country, there are data from 19,604 students in 686 schools. Data analysis relied on percentage calculations and multivariate analysis (analysis of conglomerates and cluster analysis).

The results of the present study show a high support to scientific enquiry, moderate levels of selfesteem to learn sciences and low interest for them. The responsibility towards resources and environment is rather well developed. Aspects such as awareness of environmental problems, self-esteem to learn sciences, future-oriented motivation to learn sciences and support to scientific enquiry are found to be the most closely related to achievement in sciences. Finally, there is a reflection on the need to give a new focus to science teaching in order to get students’ interest and foster their learning.