Investigation of the Relationships between High School Students’ Chemistry Laboratory Anxiety and Chemistry Attitudes in terms of Gender and Types of School

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine whether the level of anxiety of college students toward chemistry laboratory and the attitudes toward chemistry differed in gender and the type of the school. Participants were 372 high school 9th-grade (177 female, 195 male) students who attended Science High School, Anatolian High School, Vocation High School, and General High School in Sakarya. The relationships between chemistry laboratory anxiety and chemistry attitudes were examined using “Pearson Moment Correlation” Also, in order to determine whether there is a significant difference between the anxiety of students toward chemistry laboratory and the attitudes toward chemistry, ANOVA and “Independent Samples t-Test” were used.Results indicated that there was a significant and negative relationship between the attitude toward chemistry and anxiety toward chemistry laboratory. These results showed that there was significant difference between gender and the attitudes toward chemistry (p<.05); however, there was no statistically significant difference between gender and the level of anxiety of students toward chemistry laboratory (p>.05). Furthermore, it demonstrated that there was statistically significant difference between the level of anxiety of students toward chemistry laboratory and the attitudes toward chemistry in terms of the types of the school (p<.05).