The influence of first‐year chemistry students’ learning experiences on their educational choices¹

1. Currently at the Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand.

Abstract

The research reported here examined factors that influence student tertiary level chemistry enrolment choices. Students enrolled in a first‐year chemistry class were surveyed, using the Chemistry Attitudes and Experiences Questionnaire (CAEQ), three times throughout their academic year: at the start of the year (n=126), the end of the first semester (n=109), and the end of the second semester (n=84). Additionally, 19 students were interviewed using a semistructured interview protocol at the same stages throughout the year. A number of influences on student enrolment intentions are posited based on a modified version of Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour: learning experiences, attitude‐toward‐chemistry and chemistry self‐efficacy. The extent to which the students believe they had control over enrolling in chemistry and normative beliefs about enrolling in chemistry, also were investigated. Influential factors include chemistry self‐efficacy (both positive and negative), prior secondary school experiences and the fact that chemistry is compulsory for some programs. Normative beliefs exert indirect effect with students having associates in a science related field more likely to enrol in second‐year chemistry.

Notes

1. Currently at the Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand.

2. What we refer to here as a ‘course’ has a variety of names in other educational contexts: module, paper, etc. In the case of the present work a three‐year bachelor’s degree requires 21 courses, and a science and chemistry course typically comprises ca. 36 one‐hour lectures, 12 three‐hour practical laboratory classes and 12 one‐hour optional tutorial classes run over a semester of 12–13 weeks’ duration.

3. During instrument validation several subscales for chemistry self‐efficacy collapsed into one scale, the details of which are presented in Dalgety et al. (2003).

4. There was some attrition during the inquiry with a few students dropping out of the interview process.

5. These data are ordinal rather than ratio/interval level. Consequently the mean is technically not an appropriate measure of central tendency (Dalgety et al., 2003). It is possible to compute an ‘estimated mean’. Hence the means presented throughout this paper are, more correctly, estimated means.

6. In New Zealand Year‐12 or sixth form students are graded from 1 to 9, with 1 being the highest grade achievable and 9 the lowest.