The Relationship Between Development Maturity and Attitude to School Science: an exploratory study

Abstract

This longitudinal study was in the main concerned with the relationship between developmental maturity (in the physiological sense) and attitude to school science, among a group of secondry school children. The sample consisted of 269 boys and girls in a midland secondary school. They were administered a non‐verbal intelligence test, a Piagetian conceptual development test, and an attitude to school science scale, in the first and second years. In the fifth year they were again administered the attitude to school science scale. On the basis of the onset of menstruation, the girls were divided into early, normal and late developers.

The results showed that between the second and fifth years, attitudes to school science became more negative‐‐this applied to both boys and girls, but it was more marked in the case of the girls. It was also found that in the first and second years of the study, early maturing girls showed significantly more negative attitudes to school science, but that by the fifth year, early and late maturing girls were showing equally negative attitudes to this subject. Although the normal developers shared in the general decline in attitudes between the second and fifth years, their reactions to school science were less unfavourable throughout. The implications of these findings are discussed at length within the framework of current reserch and theory in this area.