ATTITUDE OF STUDENTS TOWARDS SCIENCE AT SECONDARY LEVEL IN RURAL AND URBAN SCHOOLS OF JAMMU

Abstract

Education has always been regarded in India as a source of illumination and power. The target of every educational program is to ensure that the students achieve a satisfactory outcome.ThepresentstudywascarriedouttocomparetheStudentsattitudestowardsscience in selected rural and urban schools of Jammu city at the secondary level.Datawascollected from 200 students studying science atthesecondarylevelinfourRuralandUrbanschoolsof Jammu. To assess the student’s attitudes towards science a tool developed by Dr. Savita Mishra was used. The Results shows that it is a reliable andvalidtoolforassessingattitudes towards science in Indian schools atthesecondarylevel.Thismeansthatstudentsinboththe areas rural and urban have generally a positive attitude towards science. They think that the process of inquiry developed through the study of science and are also ready to adopt a scientific attitude. The results also shows that students tend to enjoy lessons in science and are interested in science related activities. Students have generally expressed a desire to pursue a career in science. The results also shows the gender differences occur in female students i.e. Adoption of scientific attitude scale. It means that the female students are more interested in adopting a scientificattitudeascomparedtomalestudents.Finally,thisresearch reports on the comparison in attitudes of students towards science atsecondarylevelinrural and urban schools of Jammu. Results shows that on four out of five scales of tool attitude towards science there is significant differences insciencerelatedAttitudesbetweenruraland urban schools. These are social implications of science, Attitude of Scientific inquiry, adoption of Scientific attitude, Enjoyment of science lessons, leisure interest in science and career interest in science scales. The Value of the mean scores of the urban schools in all scales is found to be higher. This suggests that students of urban schools possess a positive attitude towards science as compared to rural schools students. They enjoy science and are ready to pursue their career in science as compared to the rural school students. The results also show that the students of the urban schools are more curious to learn new things in science.