STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TO SELECTED SUBJECTS IN SECONDARY ECONOMIC EDUCATION

Abstract

Students’ motivation is one of the key factors that determine their school success. It is closely linked to their attitudes toward individual school subjects. This research analyzes four crucial dimensions of students’ subject-related attitudes (practical importance, difficulty, popularity and curriculum contents attractiveness) in the secondary economic education in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the international context. The research focused on the four dimensions of students’ attitudes (n = 573) toward four major school subjects (economics, accounting, mathematics and the mother tongue) at business academies. It analyzes the data from the questionnaires using the Spearman Correlation Coefficient, the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test and the modification of Tukey’s method for multiple comparisons. The results show that the popularity of a school subject significantly correlates with its curriculum contents attractiveness and practical importance. However, the difficulty of school subjects did not influence their popularity in a negative way, which opens several questions for further research in the area. Keywords: economic education; students’ attitudes; motivation in economic school subjects; school subject popularity; school subject difficulty.