Abstract
This study employed the Attitudes Toward Biology Scale (ATBS), What Is Happening in This Class (WIHIC), and Learning Environment Questionnaire to investigate the relationships between students’ attitudes toward biology and classroom learning environments of 7 th grade students in the Taipei area. The findings showed that there were no significant changes in attitudes toward biology of the subjects at the end of the first semester. This indicated that attitudes toward biology are relatively stable attributes. However, the subjects exhibited negative changes in attitudes toward biology after the end of the second semester. These unfavorable changes in attitudes toward biology might have something to do with the increasing difficulty of the content of the biology textbook volume II. When students experienced difficulty in understanding the subject matter, it usually brought them unpleasant learning experiences and thus weakened their motivation to achieve. Significant differences in the perceptions of learning environment were found between the subjects of Taipei County and Taipei City (p < 0.05). Subjects from Taipei City scored significantly higher than subjects from Taipei County in the WIHIC. Significant differences in the perceptions of learning environments also existed between male and female subjects. Female subjects scored significantly higher than male subjects on the WIHIC (p < 0.05). Associations between attitudes toward biology and perceptions of learning environment were significant with a correlation coefficient of 0.31. Further data analysis showed that students who scored higher on the WIHIC performed significantly better on the ATBS. Furthermore, the findings also showed that significant correlations existed between attitudes toward biology and variables related to students’ interest in learning biology and teachers’ instructional management and teaching strategies.
| Keywords: | attitudes toward biology; learning environment; interest In learning; instructional management |
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