PISA 2006: Student attitudes to and engagement with science: How ready are our 15-year-olds for tomorrow's world?

Chapter 3: Beliefs in own abilities in science

How students feel about themselves and their ability in science may influence how hard they work, their interest in learning more science and their orientation towards future science careers. For example, students who think they are not good at science and would not be able to use science in their career, may be less motivated to do science or to do well in science than those who think they are quite good at science and are interested and want to continue with science in their lives. Students were asked a number of questions in PISA about how good they felt they were at science and how easy they thought it would be for them to perform a selection of scientific literacy tasks.

How good students believe they are at science (self-concept)

PISA 2006 included six questions designed to measure students’ general level of belief in their academic abilities in science (see Table 5). Just over two-thirds of New Zealand students (68%) agreed that they can usually give good answers to test questions on science topics, but they were less confident about their abilities to learn advanced science topics (40%). Less than half the students thought that science topics were easy (44%). Apart from their confidence in learning advanced science (significantly lower than the OECD average), New Zealand 15-year-old students were similar to the average for OECD countries (as shown in Table 5). It is worth noting that students in Australia had similar proportions of students agreeing with self-concept statements, including a small proportion (39%) confident in their abilities to learn advanced science topics, while students in Hong Kong-China were less confident in their science abilities in general (ranging from 35% to 56% for the statements) than New Zealand students. This is interesting considering Hong Kong-China and Australia, along with New Zealand, were high-performing countries in science in PISA 2006.

Table 5: Proportion of students agreeing with statements on self-concept in science

Note:

Response options for each statement were: strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Proportions for agreement shown in this table combine those who agreed and those who strongly agreed.

An index of self-concept in science was created using students’ responses to these six statements. The index was constructed so that, in general, students who agreed with these statements were higher on the index, and students who reacted more negatively to the statements were lower on the index. The New Zealand average on the scale was lower than the OECD average, but higher than the averages in some of the other relatively high-performing countries, including Hong Kong-China, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands.

Students with a higher self-concept in science in general had higher achievement than those with a lower self-concept, as shown in Figure 6. The strength of the relationship between self-concept and achievement observed for New Zealand students was similar to that found in both Australia and Finland. A positive relationship between achievement and self-concept in science was found in all of the countries performing above the OECD average.

Figure 6: Mean scientific literacy of students in each quarter of the index of self-concept in science

Notes:

The student index of self-concept in science combines the responses to the six statements presented in Table 5. Students in the lowest ¼ of the index did not necessarily disagree with all statements on self-concept of science; rather, they were less likely to report agreement in general than were their counterparts in the other groupings.

Standard errors appear in parentheses.

Ease of doing scientific literacy tasks (self-efficacy)

The notion of self-efficacy is different from self-concept as it includes both a student’s confidence in their ability to do science as well as a student’s belief in their ability to overcome difficulties when attempting scientific tasks. A student who believes they are good at science and can overcome any difficulties they may face as a learner seems more likely to be motivated to undertake a scientific literacy task and to expend the effort required to tackle a learning opportunity.

In order to gather information from PISA students on their self-efficacy beliefs, students were asked how easy they would find performing eight tasks on their own, with the response options: I could do this easily, I could do this with a bit of effort, I would struggle to do this on my own, I couldn’t do this. The list of tasks presented to students is given in Table 6. Around three-quarters of students believed that they could explain why earthquakes occur more frequently in some areas than in others (78%) and recognise the science question that underlies a newspaper report on a health issue (73%). The tasks where students were asked if they could identify the better of two explanations for the formation of acid rain (48%) and discuss how new evidence can lead you to change your understanding about the possibility of life on Mars (50%) proved to be more difficult for students in general.

As shown in Table 6, with the exception of the acid rain task, the ease with which New Zealand students reported they could do tasks was similar to that found on average within OECD countries. The greater apparent ease of the task on earthquakes in comparison to acid rain for New Zealand students is probably not surprising given the fact that as a small group of islands and a Pacific Rim nation, we are subject to earthquakes rather than acid rain.

Table 6: Proportion of students agreeing they could complete scientific literacy tasks

Note:

Response options for each statement were: I could do this easily, I could do this with a bit of effort, I would struggle to do this on my own, and I couldn’t do this. The proportions for agreement shown in this table combine those who could do this easily and those who could do it with a bit of effort.

An index of self-efficacy in science was created using students’ responses to these eight tasks. The index was constructed so that, in general, students who agreed they could do these tasks were higher on the index, and students who reacted more negatively were lower on the index. The New Zealand average on the scale was about the same as the OECD average, but higher than the averages for Korea and Japan.

Students’ self-efficacy had a strong relationship with achievement, as shown in Figure 7. That is, students with a greater self-efficacy had significantly higher achievement than those with lower self-efficacy. It is worth noting that this relationship was even stronger than for the enjoyment index. The relationship between self-efficacy and achievement observed for New Zealand students was similar to that found in the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Australia, Germany, and Poland.

Figure 7: Mean scientific literacy of students in each quarter of the index of self-efficacy in science

Notes:

The student index of self-efficacy in science combines the responses to the eight tasks presented in Table 6. Students in the lowest ¼ of the index did not necessarily disagree they could complete all tasks; rather, they were less likely to report agreement in general than were their counterparts in the other groupings.

Standard errors appear in parentheses.

Gender differences in beliefs in own abilities in science

New Zealand male students were more likely to report they were good at science (have a high self-concept) and were more likely to report they would be able to perform a selection of scientific literacy tasks (have a high self-efficacy) than female students. Given the gender difference in achievement, with boys having higher achievement on average in scientific literacy than girls (Telford & Caygill 2007), this result is not unexpected.

Ethnic differences in beliefs in own abilities in science

Asian students in New Zealand were more likely to report they were good at science (have a high self-concept) and were more likely to report they would be able to perform a selection of scientific literacy tasks (have a high self-efficacy) than were their Pakeha/European, Maori, and Pasifika peers. Maori students were the least likely to report they were good at science (have a high self-concept). Both Maori, and Pasifika students were the least likely to report they would be able to perform a selection of scientific literacy tasks (have a high self-efficacy) than their peers in the Pakeha/European and Asian ethnic groupings.

Given the ethnic differences in achievement, with Maori and Pasifika students having a lower mean achievement than their Asian and Pakeha/European peers (Telford & Caygill 2007), this lower self-concept among Maori and Pasifika students is perhaps not a surprising finding. However, the relatively higher means on the self-concept and self-efficacy indices for Asian students compared with Pakeha/European students is perhaps a little surprising given that the average achievement of Pakeha/European students was higher than that of Asian students.

Socio-economic differences in beliefs in own abilities in science

Students from higher socio-economic backgrounds tended to report higher scientific self-belief on average than those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.