Gender Perspective on Affective Dimensions of Chemistry Learning - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 71

favorable than boys . The researchers found that in the high-achieving group, the

attitude difference was not statistically significant.

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2.4 Relationship Between Affect and Cognition

A considerable amount of research in science education has examined the way
attitudinal and motivational factors affect cognitive learning, suggesting meaning-
ful relationships between the two (Koballa & Glynn, 2007 ). Conducted in this vein,
some of the studies reviewed in this chapter establish a relationship between
affective variables and student achievement in chemistry. For instance, Lewis
et al. ( 2009 ) found that affect plays a role even after controlling for cognition.
The study showed that after controlling for SAT scores, self-concept continued to
play a role in student performance as measured by the ACS exam in the US.
Preliminary results in this study suggested differences in the role of self-concept
for male and female students

achievement, but these results were inconclusive.
In another study that explored the effect of both cognitive and noncognitive
variables on organic chemistry achievement, students

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general chemistry grades
and ACT scores were found to be the strongest predictors of organic chemistry
achievement (Turner & Lindsay, 2003 ). Interestingly, for females, none of the
noncognitive variables were found as being related to organic chemistry achieve-
ment. On the other hand, for males, anxiety and confidence were found to be
moderately correlated. Finding no relationship between noncognitive variables
and achievement for females, the researchers call for further studies of variables
that could be playing a role in females

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' low performance in advanced courses such

as organic chemistry.
Sarantopoulos and Tsaparlis ( 2004 ), on the other hand, consider attitudes as
outcomes of chemistry teaching along with achievement. The researchers found
that using analogies in chemistry teaching helped to improve students views

toward chemistry as well as their achievement. In their study, students at the
concrete developmental level were found to benefit more from the analogies and
to develop more positive opinions. In the analyses including the gender variable, no
gender differences were detected in terms of achievement or chemistry views.
As demonstrated in the overview of the published literature on attitudes toward
chemistry and attitude relations with gender, there are varied and sometimes
contradictory results. Hofstein and Mamlok-Naaman ( 2011 ) identify type of mea-
sure, contextual differences reflected in the chemistry curricula, different grades,
and teaching strategies and methods as possibly being among the reasons leading to
such different results. Despite the dissimilarities from the studies reviewed, it
appears that chemistry as a physical science is relatively less likely to generate
differential gender effects than physics, for example. A vast amount of research
report lower interest and participation rates of high-school girls in advanced level
physics classes than boys (i.e., H¨ussler & Hoffmann, 2002 ; Zohar & Bronshtein,
2005 ). For instance, H¨ussler and Hoffmann ( 2002 ) indicate that in Germany only

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