Important but not for me as a girl: French students’ attitudes towards secondary school science

Abstract

W hile the role of science and technology is extremely important for the contemporary society, while expertise in science and technology has proved to be politically a key issue, western countries have observed a decline in students’ interest in both studying and pursuing careers in scientific subject areas. In the present article, the purpose is to document how French students relate to their school science classes, with a data from a Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) questionnaire-based study involving 2395 students (1264 girls; 1131 boys). The findings of our research show some interesting gender differences and there is no sense to treat girls as though they were a homogeneous group.