Measuring Gender Differences in Students’ Interest towards Different Contexts of Physics at Higher Secondary Level

This paper addresses students’ interest in physics in relation to different demographic variables. It examines the relationship between the students’ achievement in different context of physics. It carried a quantitative research design. The population of the study was all the students studying in higher secondary schools of both public and private sectors situated in Lahore city. A sample of 500 students was selected conveniently from both the sectors. The instruments used for the study were self-developed questionnaire and ROSE FIN questionnaire (adopted). Instruments were piloted to check the validity and reliability. For data analysis, independent sample t-test, Pearson r and regression analysis were used to find out the interests of the students across different contexts of physics. Results revealed that there is no difference between both the genders in the context of physics except fantasy context. Boys fantasized the situation more than girls and they did not show any interest in astronomical context and technological context. The outcome of boys and girls was same in the School of Physics context. The students gaining education from public institutions were good in their concepts as compared to the private school students because private institutions just focused on brilliant minds but public institutions gave equal attention to all students. Mubashara Akhtar is a Ph.D scholar at the Institute of Education and Research, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. She has participated in a number of national and international conferences. Her areas of interest include science education and educational assessment