Attitude and Self-confidence Students in Learning Natural Sciences: Rural and Urban Junior High School

Abstract

Purpose: This paper presents junior high school students' attitudes and self-confidence in learning natural science, and compares the attitudes and self-confidence based on location of school in urban and rural areas, and finds whether attitudes can affect students' self-confidence. Methodology: The study used mixed method with sequential explanatory. A sample of this study is 926 students with 511 for urban junior high school and 415 for rural junior high school usage total sampling technique. Data were then analyzed with the help of the SPSS 21 application to find descriptive statistics in terms of mean, min, max, and simple regression and independent sample t-Test. Finding: Both of school location in urban and rural area, shows that attitudes and self-confidence of the students was good category, but when comparing that results, independent sample t-shows if students attitude and self-confidence in urban schools tend more higher than in rural schools (p 0.001). Lastly, the regression shows if the level of contribution or influence of students' attitudes towards students' self-confidence is as much as 75.2 % which means that students' attitudes affect students' self-confidence. Novelty: in this study, it was found that students' attitudes affect self-confidence of students' in learning natural sciences. Moreover, comparison between students' attitudes and self-confidence is based on their school location in urban or rural.