Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2005)
Svein SJØBERG & Camilla SCHREINER
How do learners in different cultures relate to science and technology?
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Youth's orientations towards S&T - linked to the level of development in a country

Young people's values, views and ways of understanding themselves, their surroundings and the world are products of the culture in which they are growing up. Our data show a strong relationship between the HDI for a country and the responses in the ROSE questionnaire. For example, the national average score across all items in the ACE question (What I want to learn about), the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient with HDI is .85 (p < .01), which indicates a very strong inverse relationship: The higher level of development in a country, the lower interest the students express in learning about S&T-related topics.


Figure 6. Scatter-plot with regression line: HDI values (horizontal axis) and the national average score across all items in the ACE question (vertical axis) for all countries.

Figure 6 shows that the ACE mean for some of the countries in the extreme low end of the HDI scale lies one unit (in a scale with a span of three units) above many countries in the extreme high end of the HDI scale. In most of the ACE items, students in countries like Uganda and Bangladesh express much more interest in learning about the topics than students in more developed countries like Norway, Iceland, Finland and Japan. Also in the Philippines, youth express a general high level of interest.

The correlation coefficients for the four questions reported in Figure 2-Figure 5 are given in Table 1. The table indicates the general pattern appearing from most analysis of the ROSE material: The more developed a country is, the less positive young people are towards the role of S&T in society.

I would like to become a scientist -0.94
I would like to get a job in technology -0.91
Science and technology are important for society -0.78
The benefits of science are greater than the harmful effects it could have -0.73

Table 1. Pearson product moment correlation coefficient with HDI (p < .01).

We see from our data that whether young people wish to opt for a career in S&T is closely related to the country's level of development. An important challenge in poor countries is of course related to the betterment of material conditions, economic growth and to the improvement of health and the welfare system. Further material development of the society is naturally a main political and public issue, and in this respect S&T are seen as fundamental driving forces. One may assume that in such societies, a job in S&T is perceived as important for society and thereby as meaningful for the individual.

When today's modern societies were in the era of early industrialisation, the focus was directed towards progress, growth and building the country. Consequently, exactly this - to build the country - was perceived as important for the society and meaningful for the individual. It may be that we now have passed the era in which the work of physicists, technicians and engineers are seen as crucial for people's life and well-being in the more developed countries. Studies also indicate that in poorer countries, young people have a rather heroic image of scientists as persons, while this is not the case in highly developed Western societies (Sjøberg, 2002). In modern societies, neither scientists nor engineers are heroes or attractive role models for the young generation.

Obviously, the level of development influences people's expectations to the expected benefits of developments in S&T (Sicinski, 1976). The recent Eurobarometer (EU, 2005) also show that the belief in the benefits of S&T is much stronger in the less developed EU countries than in the wealthier and more developed8 . According to Inglehart (1990), late modern societies can be characterised as post-materialistic societies emphasising values like environment, democracy, care for others, self-actualisation, etc. The recruitment of Western students to medicine, biology and environment studies are not falling, and in these subjects the girls often outnumber the boys. This may indicate that youth in more developed countries believe that the most important challenges facing our society are related to health and environmental issues, and, consequently, that these fields can offer meaningful jobs. We have seen that in an Asian context, Japan is facing some challenges concerning youth's interests and attitudes related to science and technology, while the situation is less problematic in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Malaysia and India. We are looking forward to more analysis and interpretations of these results from our Asian ROSE partners, who are able to understand the Asian societies and cultures better.

8The recent Eurobarometer (EU, 2005) has collected data in 32 countries: the 15 "old" EU countries, the 10 new member states (previously Eastern Europe), the four "candidate countries" Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania and the three EFTA countries Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.

 

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