Third Year University Students’ Accounts for Choosing Chemistry

Abstract

This study examined final year undergraduate chemistry students’ choice of study programme offered at a large research-intensive university in South Africa, applying Social Cognitive Career Theory as a theoretical framework. The sample consisted of 18 students of diverse ethnicity and gender from both the extended curriculum programme and the mainstream programme who had successfully entered their final year chemistry course. These students were interviewed, and the transcripts were subjected to qualitative inductive thematic analysis. The study revealed that chemistry was a second-choice option for most of the students. Retrospective criteria significantly influenced the choice for the majority of extended curriculum programme students, especially those who chose chemistry as a second option. For the majority of the mainstream students who chose chemistry as either first or second option, it was a mixture of retrospective and prospective criteria, with a bias towards the prospective criteria. For this study, the university’s requirement of a second major for the Bachelor of Science degree was an emerging reason for students choosing chemistry.

Keywords:

• Final year students
• chemistry students
• career choice
• study programme
• self-efficacy
• outcome expectations

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the third-year chemistry class who provided the data for this study, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this article for their valuable feedback on previous drafts. This project is sponsored by the Niger Delta Development Commission in Nigeria. Any findings and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Ibiye Tonye Dagogo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0979-3735

Bette Davidowitz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7531-7454

Dale L. Taylor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5888-8431