A Demographical Analysis of Scientific Aptitude among Indian Secondary School Students
Rahul Kumar Sahu
*
Department of Teacher Education, Central University of South Bihar, Gaya, Bihar, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Scientific aptitude is a natural ability of a person to understand, apply, and reason over scientific concepts and procedures. This research compares scientific competence of secondary school students according to gender and type of students (public and private). Its purpose was to determine how gender, educational institution, geographical location, family structure and paternal occupation affected scientific aptitude. The survey involved 200 students in the government and private schools. Independent samples t-tests and a one-way ANOVA were used to evaluate scientific aptitude tests. There were no statistically significant differences of scientific aptitude on all variables. The girls had a slightly higher score than the boys, the rural students scored better than the urban students, and the pupils of nuclear families scored higher than the mixed families, but none of the differences was found to be statistically significant. The statistics suggest that gender, institutional affiliation and the socio-demographic background might not have much impact on scientific aptitude. The findings show that justifiable educational methods are efficient and all the groups of students can achieve similar success in science when they have equal learning conditions. The study supports the egalitarian National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in the sense of showing that diverse peoples can develop scientific ability.
Keywords: Scientific aptitude, demographic variables, gender differences, government and private schools, urban and rural students, family structure, father's occupation, educational equity, secondary education, NEP 2020, aptitude assessment