Examining the relationship between parent/carer's attitudes, beliefs and their child's future participation in physics

Abstract

Despite girls enjoying and being good at physics, the proportion of girls studying physics and going into physics related careers still lags behind that of boys. A large volume of research exists on the factors related to the uptake of girls into physics, however little research looks at the link between parents and their child’s physics uptake. Research shows that children’s attitudes towards physics correlate strongly with their parents’ attitudes, but more research is needed. The evidence presented here moves the research forward by modelling a number of parental attitudes and background characteristics to establish the strength of association with their child participating in physics in the future. It also develops validated scales for use with parents and suggestions for interventions to establish causality. 2,049 parents and carers of 13/14 year old children in England completed the survey. The findings indicate that parents who enjoyed physics, consider physics useful for getting a job and judge their child as academic, have the strongest associations with their child’s future participation in physics. Other key variables include the parent valuing physics, the parent attending school outside of the UK, the child being a boy and parents judging daughters as courageous and/or determined.