中學生科學學習信念、科學學業堅毅與科學學習效能之跨國比較:科教新南向研究

The main purpose of this research project is to investigate secondary school students’ science learning beliefs such as conceptions of science learning, science learning self-efficacy, and science academic hardiness in Taiwan and several Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. Thus, in the first two years, three survey instruments with respect to the students’ conceptions of learning science, science academic hardiness, and science learning self-efficacy were developed by means of review of relevant studies and several rounds of revision. In order to establish the validity and reliability of each survey instrument in each country, several pilot studies were conducted. 411 Taiwan secondary students, 455 Singapore secondary students, 405 Thailand secondary students, and 320 Malaysia secondary students (8th to 12th graders) were invited to fill out the three survey instruments based on their science learning experiences. The survey items were presented in terms of five-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The results of exploratory factor analyses indicated that the three developed survey instruments are suitable to evaluate the participants’ conceptions of learning science, science academic hardiness, and science learning self-efficacy in each country with acceptable reliabilities and reliabilities. Nevertheless, in Malaysian sample, it seems that the factors derived from the exploratory factor analyses were limited comparing to other Southeast Asian countries, especially in their conceptions of learning science as well as science learning self-efficacy. This interesting result may guide the future investigations to scrutinize the factor structure in Malaysian sample from educational and cultural perspectives. In the second year and the third year, this project collects additional questionnaire data from each country; 1,315 samples from Taiwan, 883 samples from Singapore, 1,384 samples from Thailand, and 1,799 samples from Malaysia. By using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique, this study further investigates the interrelationships among conceptions of science learning, academic hardiness in science and self-efficacy and found some country differences for the relationships. For example, in Malaysia sample, academic hardiness cannot predict their self-efficacy. However, in Singapore sample, academic hardiness can predict students’ self-efficacy of science learning as mediated by their conceptions of science learning, while their academic hardiness can also directly predict their self-efficacy of science learning. Furthermore, in Thailand sample, the results of relationships between conceptions of science learning and self-efficacy show positive prediction in five main factors such as “memorizing”, “testing”, “calculating and practicing”, “increase one’s knowledge”, and “understanding and seeing in a new way”. As in Taiwan sample, the results of conceptions of science learning can directly predict their self-efficacy of science learning in “applying” and “understanding and seeing in a new way”.