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Makale Özeti:
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This paper aims to give a picture of Greek students’ views about biology and some of the
factors that affect them. A questionnaire measuring students’ intrinsic motivation to learn
biology, individual interest in biology and perceived difficulty of biology, along with information
about students’ gender, level, parents’ occupation and educational level was administered
to 368 Greek students. Results revealed that Greek secondary school students
have almost neutral overall views about biology: they are slightly positive about biology’s
usefulness in their lives, perceive it as rather easy, but 26.4% finds no interest in it. Gender
does not seem to affect students’ overall views about biology, neither their scores in any of
the subscales - biology in Greece is as popular among boys as among girls. Younger and
older students differ only in their perceived difficulty of biology, with the older students
considering it more difficult than the younger ones. Parents’ educational level (both mothers
and fathers are taken into account) is important in affecting only students’ intrinsic motivation,
since the more educated a parent is the higher intrinsic motivation a student has
towards biology. Parents’ occupation does not affect students’ views about biology.
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