Students' (of Indonesian Islamic Senior High Schools) attitude towards chemistry: preliminary findings

Abstract

Science in Indonesian Islamic schools is still considered left behind their non-Islamic schools counterparts. The pressure of implementing the autonomous curriculum (KTSP) has invited teachers to actively engage students in the teaching and learning processes. Students' attitude and motivation to learn science have been found by many researchers to greatly influence the degree of student involvement in learning science. This study offers an insight to the attitude of Indonesian students of Islamic senior high schools regarding chemistry as the basis of any further development of science in Islamic schools. Data, drawn from 567 pupils of Islamic senior high school, most of whom are 16 and 17 years old, indicate their views about their school chemistry education, their choice of careers, and what they most like to learn about in their chemistry classrooms. While they experience that learning chemistry is interesting and decline to decrease the number of hours for chemistry, they admit that they should put more effort to learn chemistry since they find difficult to understand concepts in chemistry. Given the importance of students' attitude towards science, I argue that there is a greater need for research in order to identify aspects of the science teaching that makes school science engaging for students.