Interest of Intermediate?Level Secondary Students in Physics and Technology

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Abstract
English This article describes the results of an extensive study, which examined the interests of intermediate‐level secondary students, from the State of Hesse in the Federal Republic of Germany, in aspects of physics and technology. Both boys and girls show greater interest in technological issues than in issues of pure physics. This distribution of interest is in contrast to the importance accorded to these subjects in school curricula. Children from rural areas seem to have a slightly better background of experiences involving knowledge of physics and technology than children from urban areas. A correlation was found to exist between out‐of‐school activities concerned with technology and the natural sciences, and academic achievement as measured by students’ physics grades. Girls display a general interest in natural phenomena which are not sufficiently covered by physics curricula.