Emotions experienced by students of the 2nd year of compulsory secondary education in learning contents of Physics and Chemistry

Abstract

Given the recognized importance of the affective world in education, we consider interesting to improve our understanding on the emotions experienced by Secondary Education students, in the learning of Physics and Chemistry, particularly since in recent years there has been a vocational decrease towards careers related to science. This research aims to analyse the emotions experienced by 2nd and 3rd year students of the Compulsory Secondary Education while learning contents of Physics and Chemistry, specially two syllabus’ units: the unit of Matter (Block I) and the unit of energy and electricity (Block II), in order to find possible difficulties. The sample comprises 149 2nd year students and 152 3rd year ones, from different centers of Badajoz (Spain), during the 2014-2015 school year. The results show that students experience mainly positive emotions towards the contents of Physics and Chemistry, even though negative emotions are also felt.