Science and arts streams students' scientific epistemological beliefs

Abstract

As a step to realize Vision 2020, 60:40 ratio policy was announced to produce manpower from scientific and technical field. However, the number of students channel into science stream classes is still far from the targeted ratio. The deterioration of the students enroll into science stream after PMR, Lower Secondary Assessment will give an impact to the effort in encouraging them to further science study in tertiary level. The aim of the study is to identify scientific epistemological belief among science stream and arts stream students. Besides, it is also to identify the difference of scientific epistemological belief between science stream and arts stream students. A total of 370 respondents were selected from both science and arts streams to answer the questionnaire Physics Scientific Epistemological Measurement for Students (PESP). Results showed that most of the science stream respondents were in transition scientific epistemological belief level (67.39%). In the case of arts stream respondents, most of the respondents were in naïve and low transition epistemological belief level (92.5%). Overall, the mean value for scientific epistemological belief of science stream respondents (3.14) is higher compared to arts stream respondents (3.01). Based on the t-test result, there is a significance difference in scientific epistemological belief for both science stream and arts stream respondents (t = .07909-.17289, p < 0.05). The research results draw implications to the current curriculum system. Duration of science classes, instructions, examination questions' pattern and curricular materials should be examined and amended for the current needs. However, more research should be carried out in order to improve students' scientific epistemological belief level.