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1.
Sixteen concept words (mass, length, area, volume, solid, liquid, gas, element, compound, mixture, electron, proton, neutron, atom, molecule, and ion) associated with the theme, the nature of matter were described as simple text book definitions after examination of classroom notes and school texts of the last three decades. Sixteen multiple-choice items all of the same form were constructed for each of the concept definitions. The English version of the sixteen item test was given to 1635 high school students in Tasmania (where the language of instruction and the home language is English) and the Hindi version of the test was given to 826 students from the Bhopal/Barwani region of India where the medium of instruction is Hindi. The English and Hindi speaking data are compared from the point of view of development, performance for individual items, and overall performance at grade 10. A number of linguistic hypotheses are examined and reported upon. Although the overall score at grade 10 was identical (10.8/16) for both groups there are differences in development overall and for individual items which are of interest. Overall, the science specificity of the Hindi words does not appear to confer any clearly defined advantage or disadvantage though again there are some interesting individual anomolies.  相似文献   

2.
Given international concerns about students' pursuit (or more correctly, non-pursuit) of courses and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, this study is about achieving a better understanding of factors related to high school students' engagement in science. The study builds on previous secondary analyses of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) datasets for New Zealand and Australia. For the current study, we compared patterns of science engagement and science literacy for male and female students in Canada and Australia. The study's secondary analysis revealed that for all PISA measures included under the conceptual umbrella of engagement in science (i.e. interest, enjoyment, valuing, self-efficacy, self-concept and motivation), 15-year-old students in Australia lagged their Canadian counterparts to varying, albeit modest, degrees. Our retrospective analysis further shows, however, that gender equity in science engagement and science literacy is evident in both Canadian and Australian contexts. Additionally, and consistent with our previous findings for indigenous and non-indigenous students in New Zealand and Australia, we found that for male and female students in both countries, the factor most strongly associated with variations in engagement in science was the extent to which students participate in science activities outside of school. In contrast, and again for both Canadian and Australian students, the factors most strongly associated with science literacy were students' socioeconomic backgrounds, and the amount of formal time spent doing science. The implications of these results for science educators and researchers are discussed.  相似文献   

3.
Inquiry instruction often neglects graphing. It gives students few opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of graphs, and which are called for by current science education standards. Yet, it is not well known how to support graphing skills, particularly within middle school science inquiry contexts. Using qualitative graphs is a promising, but underexplored approach. In contrast to quantitative graphs, which can lead students to focus too narrowly on the mechanics of plotting points, qualitative graphs can encourage students to relate graphical representations to their conceptual meaning. Guided by the Knowledge Integration framework, which recognizes and guides students in integrating their diverse ideas about science, we incorporated qualitative graphing activities into a seventh grade web-based inquiry unit about cell division and cancer treatment. In Study 1, we characterized the kinds of graphs students generated in terms of their integration of graphical and scientific knowledge. We also found that students (n = 30) using the unit made significant learning gains based on their pretest to post-test scores. In Study 2, we compared students' performance in two versions of the same unit: One that had students construct, and second that had them critique qualitative graphs. Results showed that both activities had distinct benefits, and improved students' (n = 117) integrated understanding of graphs and science. Specifically, critiquing graphs helped students improve their scientific explanations within the unit, while constructing graphs led students to link key science ideas within both their in-unit and post-unit explanations. We discuss the relative affordances and constraints of critique and construction activities, and observe students' common misunderstandings of graphs. In all, this study offers a critical exploration of how to design instruction that simultaneously supports students' science and graph understanding within complex inquiry contexts.  相似文献   

4.
Fostering students' spatial thinking skills holds great promise for improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Recent efforts have focused on the development of classroom interventions to build students' spatial skills, yet these interventions will be implemented by teachers, and their beliefs and perceptions about spatial thinking influence the effectiveness of such interventions. However, our understanding of elementary school teachers' beliefs and perceptions around spatial thinking and STEM is in its infancy. Thus, we created novel measures to survey elementary teachers' anxiety in solving spatial problems, beliefs in the importance of spatial thinking skills for students' academic success, and self-efficacy in cultivating students' spatial skills during science instruction. All measures exhibited high internal consistency and showed that elementary teachers experience low anxiety when solving spatial problems and feel strongly that their skills can improve with practice. Teachers were able to identify educational problems that rely on spatial problem-solving and believed that spatial skills are more important for older compared to younger students. Despite reporting high efficacy in their general teaching and science teaching, teachers reported significantly lower efficacy in their capacities to cultivate students' spatial skills during science instruction. Results were fairly consistent across teacher characteristics (e.g., years of experience and teaching role as generalist or specialist) with the exception that only years of teaching science was related to teachers' efficacy in cultivating students' spatial thinking skills during science instruction. Results are discussed within the broader context of teacher beliefs, self-efficacy, and implications for professional development research.  相似文献   

5.
Students' difficulties in interpreting what counts as knowledge have been addressed in past research on science education. The implementation of progressivist pedagogy in terms of more student-active classroom practice and the introduction of a variety of discourses into the science classroom deepens students' difficulties. The integration of different forms and demands of knowledge and discourses typified by Science-in-Context initiatives, such as within the socioscientific framework, exemplifies this development in science education. Here, the diffuse boundaries between school subjects and other silos of knowledge lead to considerable difficulties for students to interpret what is expected from them. Such contexts having diffuse boundaries between, for example, subject discourses and other forms of knowledge, have been describes as contexts with weak classification. The present study aims to explore students' interpretation of what knowledge or meaning they are requested to produce in contexts with weak classification, here exemplified within an SSI-task. We use Bernstein's concepts of recognition rules and classification to analyze how 15- to 16-year-old students develop their discussions in groups of 4–6 students. This study reports how students' recognition of the educational demands enabled integration of different discourses in their discussion, and that the use of both universalistic and particularistic meanings can produce new understandings. Students who had not acquired recognition rules were found to keep discourses apart, expressed either as rejection of the relevance of the task, answering questions as in a traditional school task, or just exchange of personal opinions. Furthermore, they included discourses irrelevant to the issue. An important outcome of the study was that socioscientific thinking was hampered when students kept universalistic and particularistic meanings apart. This hampering results from the inhibition of dynamic exploration during SSI discussions. The results provide new insights with relevance for teachers' guiding students toward a fruitful SSI-discourse.  相似文献   

6.
The purpose of the study was to determine the level of the relationship among Turkish elementary school students' personal epistemologies, motivation, learning strategies, and achievements in science. A total of 322 fifth-grade students participated in the study. Results from the structural equation modeling showed that students' personal epistemologies influence both their motivation and metacognitive strategies in science learning. Viewing scientific knowledge as constructed by the learner contributes to the students having high motivations, high science achievement, and the ability to engage metacognitively in learning tasks.  相似文献   

7.
This study examined the relationship between students' out‐of‐school experiences and various factors associated with science learning. Participants were 1,014 students from two urban high schools (secondary schools). They completed a survey questionnaire and science assessment describing their science learning experiences across contexts and science understanding. Using multilevel statistical modelling, accounting for the multilevel structure of the data with students (Level 1) assigned to teachers (Level 2), the results indicated that controlling for student and classroom factors, students' ability to make connections between in‐school and out‐of‐school science experiences was associated with positive learning outcomes such as achievement, interest in science, careers in science, self‐efficacy, perseverance, and effort in learning science. Teacher practice connecting to students' out‐of‐school experiences was negatively associated with student achievement but has no association with other outcome measures. The mixed results found in this study alert us to issues and opportunities concerning the integration of students' out‐of‐school experiences to classroom instruction, and ultimately improving our understanding of science learning across contexts.  相似文献   

8.
The purpose of the study was to establish a relationship between the shift of meaning of the concept oxidation that has taken place during the historical development, and students' alternative concepts. First Examination Board papers were examined. The result enabled us to specify the research question. In the main part of the study, multiple‐choice items were given to 3074 senior high school students. They were asked to select the correct answer and to justify their choices. Additional illustrative material was collected in four interviews with senior high school students. The analysis of the data revealed the mechanism that some students used to interpret the reactions from NO3 ? to NO and from CO3 2? to CO2. Students' interpretations were based on the concept of a transfer of oxide ions. The mechanism explains some correct and incorrect answers to the problems. The interview study also revealed that students were reluctant to accept water as a Brønsted base. It is suggested to use students' alternative concepts about oxidation reactions in class, helping them to better understand the half‐reaction method. Students should also understand that the meaning of the concept oxidation has shifted in the course of time. In the area of acid‐base reactions, further research is needed.  相似文献   

9.
This study explored the effects of an integrated video media curriculum enhancement on students' achievement and attitudes in a first-year general high school chemistry course within a multiculturally diverse metropolitan school district. Through the use of a treatment-control experimental design, approximately 450 students in Grades 9–12 were sampled on measures of chemistry achievement and attitude over the period of 1 academic year. The results revealed significantly higher achievement scores on standardized measures of achievement as well as on microunit researcher-designed, criterion-referenced quizzes for the treatment students who experienced a general chemistry course enhanced with an integrated use of a structured chemistry video series. Correlation of student achievement with logical thinking ability revealed that students with high levels of logical thinking ability benefited most from the video-enhanced curriculum. Treatment students also scored significantly higher than control students on the chemistry attitude instrument. These results along with qualitative supportive evidence suggest that this integrated video media curriculum intervention can positively affect student chemistry achievement and attitude across ability levels and across a diverse multicultural population. Furthermore, the data suggest that educational science video media in general, and the World of Chemistry video series in particular, are instructional tools that can be used effectively to bring the often abstract, distant worlds of science into close focus and within the personal meaningful realm of each individual student. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 617–631, 1997.  相似文献   

10.
In this study we investigated junior high school students' processes of argumentation and cognitive development in science and socioscientific lessons. Detailed studies of the relationship between argumentation and the development of scientific knowledge are rare. Using video and audio documents of small group and classroom discussions, the quality and frequency of students' argumentation was analyzed using a schema based on the work of Toulmin ( 1958 ). In parallel, students' development and use of scientific knowledge was also investigated, drawing on a schema for determining the content and level of abstraction of students' meaning‐making. These two complementary analyses enabled an exploration of their impact on each other. The microanalysis of student discourse showed that: (a) when engaging in argumentation students draw on their prior experiences and knowledge; (b) such activity enables students to consolidate their existing knowledge and elaborate their science understanding at relatively high levels of abstraction. The results also suggest that students can acquire a higher quality of argumentation that consists of well‐grounded knowledge with a relatively low level of abstraction. The findings further suggest that the main indicator of whether or not a high quality of argument is likely to be attained is students' familiarity and understanding of the content of the task. The major implication of this work for developing argumentation in the classroom is the need to consider the nature and extent of students' content‐specific experiences and knowledge prior to asking them to engage in argumentation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 101–131, 2008  相似文献   

11.
ABSTRACT

This longitudinal study explored the effects of a Cooperation-driven Socioscientific Issue (CDSSI) intervention on junior high school students' perceptions of critical thinking (CT) and self-regulation (SR) in Taiwan. Forty-nine grade 7 students were randomly selected as an experimental group (EG) to attend a 3-semester 72-hour intervention; while another 49 grade 7 students from the same school were randomly selected as the comparison group (CG). All participants completed a 4-wave student questionnaire to assess their perceptions of CT and SR. In addition, 8 target students from the EG with the lowest scores on either CT or SR were purposefully recruited for weekly observation. These target students and their teachers were interviewed one month after the intervention in each semester. Analyses of covariance and paired-wise t-tests revealed that the EG students' perceptions of CT and SR in learning science were improved during the study and were significantly better than their counterparts' at the end of the study. Systematic interview and classroom observation results were consistent with the quantitative findings. This study adds empirical evidence and provides insights into how CDSSI can be integrated into planning and implementing effective pedagogical strategies aimed at increasing students' perceptions of CT and SR in learning science.  相似文献   

12.
The impact of summer science‐enrichment programs on high‐school students' science motivation and confidence was evaluated in a 7‐month period following program completion. The programs took place on a college campus. The splashdown effect was defined as program‐related changes the program graduates recognized in themselves that became apparent to them after reentry to their home high school. The effect was studied in a group of 88 gifted girls and boys from 38 high schools. On qualitative and quantitative measures obtained during private interviews, students reported a strong splashdown effect after returning to their high school. Results supported the validity of the splashdown concept. Splashdown motivation and splashdown confidence (i.e., recognition of program‐related gains in motivation and confidence that occurred after high‐school reentry) predicted change in corresponding science attitudes during the follow‐up period. As predicted by social comparison theory, the intensity of the splashdown effect was associated with average school achievement in the student's home high school. Students from academically weaker schools reported stronger splashdown effects. Implications for enhancing and evaluating the effect of science‐enrichment programs on students' science attitudes are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 359–375, 2005  相似文献   

13.
Recent research reveals that students' interest in school science begins to decline at an early age. As this lack of interest could result in fewer individuals qualified for scientific careers and a population unprepared to engage with scientific societal issues, it is imperative to investigate ways in which interest in school science can be increased. Studies have suggested that inquiry learning is one way to increase interest in science. Inquiry learning forms the core of the primary syllabus in Singapore; as such, we examine how inquiry practices may shape students' perceptions of science and school science. This study investigates how classroom inquiry activities relate to students' interest in school science. Data were collected from 425 grade 4 students who responded to a questionnaire and 27 students who participated in follow-up focus group interviews conducted in 14 classrooms in Singapore. Results indicate that students have a high interest in science class. Additionally, self-efficacy and leisure-time science activities, but not gender, were significantly associated with an increased interest in school science. Interestingly, while hands-on activities are viewed as fun and interesting, connecting learning to real-life and discussing ideas with their peers had a greater relation to student interest in school science. These findings suggest that inquiry learning can increase Singaporean students' interest in school science; however, simply engaging students in hands-on activities is insufficient. Instead, student interest may be increased by ensuring that classroom activities emphasize the everyday applications of science and allow for peer discussion.  相似文献   

14.
In recent years, there has been a strong push to transform STEM education at K-12 and collegiate levels to help students learn to think like scientists. One aspect of this transformation involves redesigning instruction and curricula around fundamental scientific ideas that serve as conceptual scaffolds students can use to build cohesive knowledge structures. In this study, we investigated how students use mass balance reasoning as a conceptual scaffold to gain a deeper understanding of how matter moves through biological systems. Our aim was to lay the groundwork for a mass balance learning progression in physiology. We drew on a general models framework from biology and a covariational reasoning framework from math education to interpret students' mass balance ideas. We used a constant comparative method to identify students' reasoning patterns from 73 interviews conducted with undergraduate biology students. We helped validate the reasoning patterns identified with >8000 written responses collected from students at multiple institutions. From our analyses, we identified two related progress variables that describe key elements of students' performances: the first describes how students identify and use matter flows in biology phenomena; the second characterizes how students use net rate-of-change to predict how matter accumulates in, or disperses from, a compartment. We also present a case study of how we used our emerging mass balance learning progression to inform instructional practices to support students' mass balance reasoning. Our progress variables describe one way students engage in three dimensional learning by showing how student performances associated with the practice of mathematical thinking reveal their understanding of the core concept of matter flows as governed by the crosscutting concept of matter conservation. Though our work is situated in physiology, it extends previous work in climate change education and is applicable to other scientific fields, such as physics, engineering, and geochemistry.  相似文献   

15.
Students dropping out of education with no qualifications has been an important problem in the West for decades. Little relevant research has concentrated on school characteristics, and research into the role teachers might play in students' decision to quit school is particularly scarce. Using multilevel analyses of data for 11,844 students in 84 Flemish secondary schools, we investigate whether teachers' shared expectations of students are associated with students' intention to drop out. Particularly in vocational education, teachers' beliefs about the teachability of students influence the students' intention to quit, irrespective of perceived teacher support and students' sense of futility.  相似文献   

16.
In an attempt to accelerate the development of formal operations in average young adolescents, intervention lessons relating to all formal schemata were designed in the context of school science courses. Over a period of two years, up to 30 intervention lessons were given by science teachers to their classes in eight schools. Boys who started the program aged 12+ showed a pre-posttest effect size on Piagetian tests of 0.89 SD compared with control classes. In terms of British norms for the development of operational thinking this was a mean change from the 51st to the 74th percentile. Neither the middle school students nor the 12+ girls showed greater gain than the controls. Gains were shown by girls in one 11+ class and in the two 11+ laboratory classes. In the laboratory school students given intervention lessons by the researchers maintained their gains over controls in formal operations at a delayed posttest one year after cessation of the program. There was no effect on tests of science achievement during the intervention. It was argued that the interventions needed to be accompanied by in-service training designed to enable teachers to change their teaching style in line with their students' increased operational thinking capacity.  相似文献   

17.
A recent summary of research produced by a task force of psychologists and educational researchers associated with the National Association for Gifted Children and the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented indicated that high‐ability students are generally at least as well adjusted as any other group of youngsters. This research also found, however, that gifted and talented students can face a number of situations that may constitute sources of risk to their social and emotional development. Some of these issues emerge because of a mismatch with educational environments that are not responsive to the pace and level of gifted students' learning and thinking. Others occur because of unsupportive social, school, or home environments. In this article, current research about the social and emotional development of gifted and talented students is summarized and suggestions are made about strategies to enhance these students' school experiences. Suggestions are provided for assessment and educational programming based on students' strengths and interests that may result in helping talented students realize their potential. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 119–130, 2004.  相似文献   

18.
The purpose of this study was to construct and study the impact of a research‐based sequence for teaching the concept of modelling to seventh‐grade science students. We identified students' notions of models and the aspects of school science to be addressed regarding the model concept, which were then taken into account when we planned the learning sequence. The idea of modelling in science was taught while the students were learning about the change of states of matter in seventh‐grade physics. A pre‐interview revealed that the students' notions of models were very limited, while a post‐interview showed that this improved in the course of the series of lessons. There was also a statistically significant difference in the students' understanding of modelling between our target group and a control group consisting of ninth‐grade students who had received only the normal teaching. However, a delayed post‐questionnaire completed a few months after the teaching sequence showed that the stability of learning results were dependent on whether models and modelling were used in the normal teaching conducted after the teaching sequence. Implications for teaching, teacher education and research are also addressed in this paper.  相似文献   

19.
To understand how students learn about science controversy, this study examines students' reasoning about tradeoffs in the context of a technology‐enhanced curriculum about genetically modified food. The curriculum was designed and refined based on the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration Framework to help students sort and integrate their initial ideas and those presented in the curriculum. Pre‐test and post‐test scores from 190 students show that students made significant (p?<?0.0001) gains in their understanding of the genetically modified food controversy. Analyses of students' final papers, in which they took and defended a position on what type of agricultural practice should be used in their geographical region, showed that students were able to provide evidence both for and against their positions, but were less explicit about how they weighed these tradeoffs. These results provide important insights into students' thinking and have implications for curricular design.  相似文献   

20.
The present study empirically addresses two longstanding controversial issues in the field of intellectual styles. The first concerns the distinction (or similarity) between various style constructs. The second relates to whether or not intellectual styles make a difference to students' academic achievement. Specifically, the study investigated the relationship between Torrance's modes of thinking and Sternberg's thinking styles. It also examined the role of the two style constructs in achievement in Chinese, English, and mathematics. Three self‐report inventories were administered to 452 students from a senior secondary school in rural China. After students' age, gender, and self‐rated abilities were controlled for, thinking styles predicted modes of thinking. In general, conservative intellectual styles predicted better achievement across the three subjects among students in lower grade levels, whereas creative intellectual styles contributed to achievement in Chinese among students in higher grade levels. It is concluded that each of the two style constructs has a unique value in explaining individual differences in human performance. Furthermore, the study makes another call for cultivating creative intellectual styles among school students.  相似文献   

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