The journal for teachers, researchers and other practitioners in chemistry education.
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Paper
Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2009, 10, 281 - 290, DOI: 10.1039/b920833j
Comparing Slovenian year 8 and year 9 elementary school pupils
knowledge of electrolyte chemistry and their intrinsic motivationIztok Devetak, Erna Drofenik Lorber, Mojca Juri
evi
and Saa A. Gla
ar
This study explored the differences between eight-year elementary school pupils (before the curriculum reform) and nine-year elementary school pupils (soon after the curriculum reform) in Slovenia, as regards specific chemistry knowledge and motivation to learn chemistry. Altogether, 191 elementary school pupils participated in the study. The results show that pupils of nine-year elementary school are not significantly better at chemistry knowledge test scores than eight-year elementary school pupils. Similar results were obtained when comparing intrinsic motivation. The results also show that those students who exhibit a higher level of intrinsic motivation to learn chemistry do not perform better at the test as a whole, but the correlation is low, although statistically significant, between motivation and pupils
performance at solving selected problems presented in this paper. Results show that students develop different misconceptions of selected chemical concepts. Based on the results of this study, some guidelines for teachers are suggested.
