Student's Attitude toward Social Studies Course and its Relationship with Exam Anxiety:The Case of High School Students in Isfahan

The purpose of the present study is to measure male and female students’ attitudes towards Social Studies course and to investigate its relationship with students’ exam anxiety in public high schools of the first and fifth areas of Isfahan. Students have different interpretations and attitudes toward school materials. Curriculum developers must plan the curriculum based on real and valid data gathered from investigating students’ attitude towards the course presented in the high school. Two instruments are employed in the current study. The first one is Mathematics Attitudes Scale (MAS, Aiken, 1985; 2005) which has been modified based on the Social Studies Course. This instrument contains 28 items and four subscales (Enjoyment, Important, Motivation and Fear). The second one is Exam Anxiety Questionnaire (Abulghasemi et al., 1375). The data was collected from 300 male and female high school students of Isfahan. The reliability of Mathematics Attitudes Scale in this study was found to be 0.77. The results show that there is a negative correlation between students’ level of attitude towards social studies course and exam anxiety. The results of the study also revealed that there is no significant difference between male and female students with regard to their attitudes and anxiety levels in social studies course.