A Study on Political Knowledge and Political Attitudes of Junior High School Students

[[abstract]]The purpose of the research is to explore the political knowledge and attitudes of junior high school students in Taoyuan County and then examine their background variables. The methodology of this research was a questionnaire survey. The research instrument is edited by the researcher herself and divided into two subscales: students’ political knowledge and students’ political attitudes. The subjects of the research are ninth graders of 98 school year, totally receiving 1027 valid questionnaires. All data collected are analyzed by the methods of descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation. The main findings of this research are as follows: 1.Political knowledge (1)The political knowledge of junior high school students in Taoyuan County is medium level. (2)There are significant differences in students’ political knowledge in terms of genders, parental groups, family structures, the staff experiences , the selection of social study textbooks, teacher’s genders of citizenship education, school’s area. (3)There is a positive correlation between the scores of citizenship education classroom atmosphere scale and the scores of political knowledge test. Therefore, the opener the citizenship education classroom atmosphere the students perceive, the more political knowledge the students have. 2.Political attitudes (1)The political attitudes of junior high school students in Taoyuan County are active and positive. The democratic attitude , the sense of citizen duty, and the political efficacy tend to be active, but political trust tend to be passive. (2)There are significant differences in students’ political attitudes in terms of the staff experiences , the selection of social study textbooks, the size of the schools. (3)There is a positive correlation between the scores of citizenship education classroom atmosphere scale and the scores of political attitudes scale. Therefore, the opener the citizenship education classroom atmosphere the students perceive, the more active and positive the students’ attitudes are. 3.The correlation between political knowledge and political attitudes (1)There are positive correlations between students’ political knowledge and political attitudes, among students’ political knowledge, political attitudes, democratic attitudes, political efficacy and the sense of citizen duty, yet a negative correlation between students’ political knowledge and political trust. It indicates that the more political knowledge the students’ have, the more active and positive the students’ attitudes are, yet the more passive the students’ political trust is. (2) Based on the findings above, some suggestions are provided for the research: 1.For the designing of teaching material: specify the competence indicators and the basic content and enrich the content. 2.Develop the democratic classroom atmosphere. 3.Encourage students to participate in public affairs. 4.Take action to conduct the policy of Small-Class. 5.Pay much attention and care to disadvantaged students. 6.Develop the honest and upright image of authoritative figure. 7.Emphasize both affective and cognitive teaching.