Children's perceptions of purposes for studying different subjects in school

Examiners explored 4th and 6th graders' perceptions of studying 6 subjects in school: language, math, science, social studies, music, and visual arts. Participants were asked to indicate whether they agreed or disagreed with each of 12 reasons for studying each of the 6 subjects. Five of the reasons included general educational goals that were applicable to all subjects (cross-curricular goals), 5 included objectives established for a particular subject (subject-specific objectives), and 2 represented goals irrelevant to the subject. Both 4th and 6th graders selected mainly subject-specific objectives (e.g., "learn about different rhythms") as reasons for studying music and visual arts. Many children used some of the general cross-curricular goals (e.g., "do well in school in the future"), in addition to the subject-specific goals, to describe why they were studying core subjects: language, math, social studies, and science.