Oh yes, there is. Since you mentioned chemistry, I will take it to illustrate my point. In each country, academic performance or achievement, say in chemistry, is roughly situated between two scores on a scale of 100 (say, here, between 40 and 70). If your students are good achievers, they will score higher than the acknowledged range of scores. However, if they are strikingly below the average, there must be an explanation, which is often arrived at through a survey of the perception of chemistry by students. To conjecture, some of the explanations may lie within the educational system itself (including one or all of the curriculum and syllabi, teacher, and student) or in the broader political, economic, social, etc., contexts of the country. The role of the educator on eliciting the perception of students about chemistry here, is to try to see if anything can be done to overcome a negative perception, and slowly begin to turn it into a positive one, which would definitely through time have a favorable impact on academic achievement.

Victor Tubosun Babalola Science education is a branch of science concerned with the dissemination of scientific information, some social science, and the process of teaching science pedagogy in order to set expectations for the growth of knowledge among members of the scientific community.

Yes, there is. In some countries, a student already has a predetermined courses to take if he must pursue sciences or technology related profession.

Most times, some students don't perceive the courses they enroll as useful in practical life. What do you expect? Lack of interest and poor achievement.

Outcome of such research is important for curriculum development and policy making.

The rationale for such perceptions studies (more accurately termed conceptualisations) is that the learner begins the course with "some ideas" about what is to be taught - how they have conceptualised-come to understand the concept being studied. They make sense of what they are being taught in terms of their prior understanding - this is the essence of a constructivist interpretation of learning. A simple example: a student might begin a study of geography with an understanding that the earth is flat: a constructivist teaching approach would recognise these (prior to teaching) conceptualisations (ways of thinking about) and enable the student to engage with both their existing understanding and the theory being taught.

Qualitative research about perception of students in chemistry is important because views of students are very important ,their voices can be a factor to assess and evaluate educative processes within the curriculum

The following is an example of work I do with suspended students. I was a high school biology teacher before working with these youth, and I often look for ways to integrate science as a way of knowing and perceiving the world in connection to our actions as people. To give further context, the organization I work for uses Restorative Practices as a way to interact with youth. We use the practice of circles when helping youth to process through all things, be it education or their actions in life. The approach, while a it is primarily used for building interpersonal relationships, works by through the investigation of a phenomenon, just like science. We use 5 simple questions to guide youth through the process, the first one of which is, "What happened," or in science, "What do you observe?"

On January 18, I had an impromptu restorative conversation with youth AB. The content of the conversation focused around listening to your gut when it is trying to tell you the difference between right and wrong, how the eye focuses light, and what that means for people.

We had asked if AB had ever experienced a situation where she had a gut feeling that there was something that she should do, but ignored that feeling because it didn’t have a clear outcome. After we gave a personal example, modeling vulnerability (Watchtel, 2016), she opened up and talked about a time when she had stolen a pencil from one of her friends. She said that she remembered knowing it was wrong and thinking that she shouldn’t take it, but also thinking that she didn’t want to pay for it – she just wanted it. In this moment she recognized that we often times ignore the little voice in our heads that tells us to do good because the voices are at times, truly “little,” and very quiet. For a moment the conversation halted as AB focused on here science homework.

In science she was learning about how the human eye worked. To this effect, she asked about peripheral vision. I explained to her that peripheral vision occurs because it takes longer for the light to travel to the middle of our pupil on the “periphery” and that the items directly in front of us are the most in focus because the light has less of an indirect path to travel to the center of the eye. She then noted, “When I put the pencil in front of my eye, I can look right at it, but when I look past it the pencil becomes blurry.”

I responded with the following explanation, while modeling the phenomena that occurs when you shift focus from an object in front of your face to your surroundings: “We often do not have a decision as to what our environment looks like, or what is in front our face. We do however have a decision as to what we focus on. We can choose to focus on the pencil or we can choose to focus on the world beyond. So, which one do you think is better?”

She responded with, “The world around.”

I asked, “Why, what do you mean?”

She then halted and deflected, failing to respond. She was halted in response.

Ten minutes later AB asked about the background image on my computer screen. On the computer screen was an image of a rusty robot, lying in a pool of water. Its components were configured to make it look as if the robot was smiling. In its still hands there was a flower, clutched and held over its robot heart. She asked me if there was a bigger story to the picture. I noted that artists often have a reason for the images that they compose and then asked the question, “What do you think the story is?” She told me about an animated short clip she had seen where a son had given his grandmother a robot to take care of her since he couldn’t. The robot was faithful. Then one day the grandma died and the robot stood by her and waited for his batteries to run out.

I asked her whether or not the story was happy or sad. She said that it was a little bit of both. At this point I reminded her of her observations about the pencil when she was asking about peripheral vision. I noted to her that this was one of those times where she gets to decide what she sees. Seeing a cartoon where someone dies is sad and, in the same moment, she has the ability to look past what she sees directly to see the beauty in the story.

This theme carried into our formal circle, where I her whether or not the fact that she got suspended was a good or bad thing. She noted that it was a good thing, where the number one take away she had was the lesson about perception and learning to alter the way she viewed events in her life.