Making Connections: Learning and Teaching Chemistry in Context

Even though several studies have reported positive attitudinal outcomes from context-based chemistry programs, methodological obstacles have prevented researchers from comparing satisfactorily the chemistry-learning outcomes between students who experience a context-based program with those who experience a content-driven program. In this narrative inquiry we are able to address the question: how do the recalled experiences of a student and her teacher in context-based and concept-based chemistry programs compare? From the student’s unique perspective of experiencing both programs with the same teacher, we have constructed our collective account around four themes; namely, the extent to which the student makes connections between chemistry concepts and real-world contexts, developing research independence through engaging in extended experimental investigations related to contexts, learning chemistry concepts through contexts, and conceptual sequencing in a context-based program. The student reported real-world connections between chemistry concepts and contexts, found her engagement in the context-driven tasks interesting and productive, and identified connected sequences of concepts across the contexts studied. Despite difficulties for teachers who are required to shift pedagogies, the student’s lived experiences and outcomes from a context-based program provide some encouragement in working through these issues.     

Academic Success in Context-Based Chemistry: Demonstrating fluid transitions between concepts and context

Curriculum developers and researchers have promoted context-based programmes to arrest waning student interest and participation in the enabling sciences at high school and university. Context-based programmes aim for student connections between scientific discourse and real-world contexts to elevate curricular relevance without diminishing conceptual understanding. This interpretive study explored the learning transactions in one 11th grade context-based chemistry classroom where the context was the local creek. The dialectic of agency/structure was used as a lens to examine how the practices in classroom interactions afforded students the agency for learning. The results suggest that first, fluid transitions were evident in the student–student interactions involving successful students; and second, fluid transitions linking concepts to context were evident in the students' successful reports. The study reveals that the structures of writing and collaborating in groups enabled students' agential and fluent movement between the field of the real-world creek and the field of the formal chemistry classroom. Furthermore, characteristics of academically successful students in context-based chemistry are highlighted. Research, teaching, and future directions for context-based science teaching are discussed.     

Context-based learning in the middle years: achieving resonance between the real-world field and environmental science concepts

ABSTRACT

There is growing interest in how to engage middle school students in science to improve their enthusiasm for science and to arrest the decline in uptake in the senior years. Also, there is interest in improving students’ application of science to real-life situations, a requirement for international tests. One approach that offers hope for improving students’ connections between concepts and context is the context-based approach. Context-based units that connect canonical science with the real-world of the student’s local community have been trialled in the senior years but are new in the middle years. Research in senior classes has shown that students who were taught through a context-based approach demonstrated fluid transitions between the context and concepts in written work and student-student conversations. In the current ethnographic study we built on our previous work and investigated how students make connections between the environmental science concepts and the context of the weekly visits to the local creek. Students were immersed in the real-world context by completing an 11-week environmental science unit that required assessment of the health of a creek. Two assertions emerged; firstly, student-student conversations at the creek afforded students the opportunity for interconnections between environmental science concepts and the context (defined as resonance); and secondly, students’ written reports about the health of the creek demonstrated resonance. Furthermore, group work encouraged students the agency to complete sets of tasks that privileged visually obvious environmental science concepts such as pollution, identification of plants/animals or turbidity/flow rate.     

Context characteristics and their effects on students’ situational interest in chemistry

ABSTRACT

Many studies in science education acknowledge the positive effects of context-based learning on students’ interest and attitudes. However, little is known about the design criteria of contextual situations generating these effects and how facets of students’ situational interest are affected while learning in a contextualised setting. This paper ties in with this initial situation and reports results of two projects analysing the influence of context characteristics on students’ situational interest, referring to contexts as task parameters in the first project and as learning activities in the second. In the first project, everyday related and unique contexts are compared, and the effects of different contextual topics on student learning are investigated. Particularly, regarding the feeling- and value-related valence of situational interest, the results of different studies will be compared and interpreted. The second project investigated structures of interest related to activities along an adapted version of the ‘RIASEC’-model for different content areas and age groups. The chosen contents were embedded in personal as well as societal and professional context settings. Finally, we summarise the relevance of the different models, results and instruments to better understand different notions of interest and outline implications for further studies about teaching that improves student learning.     

Kindling fires: examining the potential for cumulative learning in a Journalism curriculum

This study investigated context-dependency of learning as an indicator for students' potential to continue learning after graduation. We used Maton's theoretical concepts of ‘cumulative’ and ‘segmented’ learning, and ‘semantic gravity’, to look for context-independent learning in students' assessments in a Journalism curriculum. We postulated whether the curriculum constrained or enabled cumulative learning. Students' responses to assessments were coded by their degree of context-dependency, or semantic gravity. We found that, firstly, students are overly successful in producing context-dependent answers but struggle to deliver context-independent responses. Secondly, students were not effective when they used higher level knowledge principles without the foundation of lower level ones. Lastly, the marking criteria were encouraging markers to reward context-dependent answers over context-independent ones. This study has implications for educators interested in curriculum design that enables cumulative learning in discipline specific contexts.     

Quantitative skills as a graduate learning outcome: exploring students’ evaluative expertise

In the biosciences, quantitative skills are an essential graduate learning outcome. Efforts to evidence student attainment at the whole of degree programme level are rare and making sense of such data is complex. We draw on assessment theories from Sadler (evaluative expertise) and Boud (sustainable assessment) to interpret final-year bioscience students’ responses to an assessment task comprised of quantitative reasoning questions across 10 mathematical and statistical topics. The question guiding the study was: do final year science students graduate knowing the quantitative skills that they have, and knowing the quantitative skills that they do not have? Confidence indicators for the 10 topics gathered students’ perceptions of their quantitative skills. Students were assigned to one of four categories: high performance-high confidence; low performance-low confidence; high performance-low confidence; or low performance-high confidence – with those in the first two categories demonstrating evaluative expertise. Results showed the majority of students effectively evaluated their quantitative skills as low performance-low confidence. We argue that the application of evaluative expertise to make sense of this graduate learning outcome can further the debate on how assuring graduate learning outcomes can enhance student learning.     

Distinguishing complex ideas about climate change: knowledge integration vs. specific guidance

We compared two forms of automated guidance to support students’ understanding of climate change in an online inquiry science unit. For specific guidance, we directly communicated ideas that were missing or misrepresented in student responses. For knowledge integration guidance, we provided hints or suggestions to motivate learners to analyze features of their response and seek more information. We guided both student-constructed energy flow diagrams and short essays at total of five times across an approximately week-long curriculum unit. Our results indicate that while specific guidance typically produced larger accuracy gains on responses within the curriculum unit, knowledge integration guidance produced stronger outcomes on a novel essay at posttest. Closer analysis revealed an association between the time spent revisiting a visualization and posttest scores on this summary essay, only for those students in the knowledge integration condition. We discuss how these gains in knowledge integration extend laboratory results related to ‘desirable difficulties’ and show how autonomous inquiry can be fostered through automated guidance.     

Authentic assessment for a more inclusive history

ABSTRACT

Practitioners and theorists in higher education have explored authentic assessment as a mechanism to better connect student work to real-world practice. This article considers the possibilities for authentic assessment in teaching history as a discipline and professional field at university, considering how ‘real-world practice’ might be expanded to include the understanding and practice of inclusive or participatory history. This article explores student survey responses related to three authentic assessment tasks, designed and delivered over a three-year history curriculum. This survey was designed to understand the efficacy of authentic assessment for scaffolding historical practice at university, and to also evaluate its possibilities for helping to transform the practice of history, which in recent decades has sought, with limited success, more inclusive epistemologies and pedagogies. In this article we suggest that authentic assessment is likely to successfully connect history students to real-world activities, but that it is necessary to consider whose authenticity is at stake if the discipline of history is to succeed in its wider aims. Drawing on student comments, we conclude that authentic assessment can contribute to student becoming, but that it also helps build a similar kind of ‘becoming’ for the discipline and practice of history itself.     

Science Education and Health Education: Locating the Connections

Context-based chemistry education aims to improve student interest and motivation in chemistry by connecting canonical chemistry concepts with real-world contexts. Implementation of context-based chemistry programmes began 20 years ago in an attempt to make the learning of chemistry meaningful for students. This paper reviews such programmes through empirical studies on six international courses, ChemCom (USA), Salters (UK), Industrial Science (Israel), Chemie im Kontext (Germany), Chemistry in Practice (The Netherlands) and PLON (The Netherlands). These studies are categorised through emergent characteristics of: relevance, interest/attitudes/motivation and deeper understanding. These characteristics can be found to an extent in a number of other curricular initiatives, such as science-technology-society approaches and problem-based learning or project-based science, the latter of which often incorporates an inquiry-based approach to science education. These initiatives in science education are also considered with a focus on the characteristics of these approaches that are emphasised in context-based education. While such curricular studies provide a starting point for discussing context-based approaches in chemistry, to advance our understanding of how students connect canonical science concepts with the real-world context, a new theoretical framework is required. A dialectical sociocultural framework originating in the work of Vygotsky is used as a referent for analysing the complex human interactions that occur in context-based classrooms, providing teachers with recent information about the pedagogical structures and resources that afford students the agency to learn.     

“It is complicated!”: Practices and challenges of generic skills assessment in Vietnamese universities

Contributing to a lack of studies related to generic skills (GS) assessment, especially in non-Western university contexts, this article reports a study that explored practices and challenges of assessing students’ GS in the Business Administration programmes in six Vietnamese universities. Content analysis of interviews with 41 teachers of skills subjects and specialised subjects revealed that teachers were organising different formative and summative GS-assessment activities. Unfortunately, the analysis indicated that their GS-assessment practices were fragmented across subjects in the curriculum. Teachers’ beliefs regarding their roles in the university, teachers’ expertise and several contextual factors were found to influence their assessment practices. The article argues that leadership should be exercised more effectively in order to remove obstacles and engage teachers with assessing GS, which will yield washback effect on students’ learning of these skills.     

Self-regulation of assessment beliefs and attitudes: a review of the Students’ Conceptions of Assessment inventory

How students understand, feel about and respond to assessment might contribute significantly to learning behaviour and academic achievement. This paper reviews studies that have used a relatively new self-reported survey questionnaire (Students’ Conceptions of Assessment – SCoA) about student perceptions and understandings of assessment. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modelling results have shown, consistent with self-regulation theory, that the SCoA inventory has meaningful relations with academic performance among New Zealand high school students. Further, German, Hong Kong, American, and New Zealand studies have shown that the SCoA has relations to motivational constructs (e.g. effort, learning strategies, interest, self-efficacy and anxiety) that are also consistent with self-regulation. The SCoA inventory extends our understanding of how student conceptions of assessment are an integral part of self-regulation and provide a warrant for use in research studies investigating test-taker responses to assessment practices and innovations at both university and high school levels.     

Measuring classroom climate: Validation of the CCQ-P for primary,middle school and high school levels,on the Romanian population

Several high-quality instruments are used for investigations on classroom climate. Out of these, none is valid on all three educational pre-tertiary levels (primary, middle school and high school). This situation limits our understanding about classroom climate along different educational levels. We collected responses on a large Romanian student sample (1003 students, 49.3 % boys), and we investigated the internal validity of the Classroom Climate Questionnaire – Primary (CCQ-P, Aldridge & Galos, 2018) using confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance analyses. The original model obtained a good fit and partially maintained structure across the three educational levels. Thus, this study opens the door for the investigation of this questionnaire for the three pre-university levels in other national contexts. This could impact how we look at the transition of students between levels and it could offer new input about the practical actions related to this process.     

Aligning assessment with the needs of work-integrated learning: the challenges of authentic assessment in a complex context

Abstract

Work-integrated learning (WIL) is a feature of university courses, both in professional areas, where it is commonplace, but also across many different disciplines. Assessment of WIL can be complex as it involves parties and settings external to the university, and it can be problematic because of difficulties in aligning learning activities during placements with what is or can be assessed by the university. This paper explores the relationship between students’ placement experiences and accompanying assessments in contexts where activities are tightly coupled with the curriculum, and in those where it is not. It draws on a qualitative analysis of student interviews and drawings by the interviewees of their WIL experiences, supplemented with analysis of unit guides. Our findings highlight that students’ perceptions of authenticity of assessment were undermined by misalignments between the student, university and industry. Assessment authenticity was perceived by students as based on alignment between their current and future selves in the assessment process, involvement of industry supervisors and relevance of placement activities to assessment activities. The paper discusses the complexity of coordination of educational activities with external partners, especially when one party drives assessment. It then suggests a reframing of WIL assessment to promote alignment and authenticity.     

Understanding the development of interest and self-efficacy in active-learning undergraduate physics courses

Modeling Instruction (MI), an active-learning introductory physics curriculum, has been shown to improve student academic success. Peer-to-peer interactions play a salient role in the MI classroom. Their impact on student interest and self-efficacy – preeminent constructs of various career theories – has not been thoroughly explored. Our examination of three undergraduate MI courses (N?=?221) revealed a decrease in students’ physics self-efficacy, physics interest, and general science interest. We found a positive link from physics interest to self-efficacy, and a negative relationship between science interest and self-efficacy. We tested structural equation models confirming that student interactions make positive contributions to self-efficacy. This study frames students’ classroom interactions within broader career theory frameworks and suggests nuanced considerations regarding interest and self-efficacy constructs in the context of undergraduate active-learning science courses.     

Students’ interpersonal trust and attitudes towards standardised tests: exploring affective variables related to student assessment

Cognitive and psychometric variables have directed research on student test performance. However, student learning involves a substantial affective component. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between two kinds of affective variables – interpersonal trust and attitudes towards standardised tests – likely to underlie student test performance. We also examined the effect of a print media report on students’ trust and attitudes towards testing. Using structural equation modelling, we investigated the responses of 206 university students to a modified version of the Test Attitude Survey and Interpersonal Trust Scale. One notable result indicated that variation in students’ attitudes about the effort expended on tests was explained by their interpersonal trust and their attitudes towards the value placed on tests. Viewed through the lens of expectancy theory, these results suggest that affective variables need to be more fully considered when considering practice and generating policy to improve student test performance.     

Interventions in teaching first-year law: feeding forward to improve learning outcomes

Aligned assessment is a cornerstone of higher education curriculum design. Yet, it does not address the problem of how students learn how they should proceed when faced with a new assessment task. That teaching task is often left to the role of ‘feedback’. This article examines changes to a first year law unit, introduced following negative student feedback about an assessment task. The feedback made apparent a lack of alignment between staff and student expectations as to what was being assessed and how it was being assessed. The article considers formative assessment through a feed-forward model, and relates this to the design and process of the intervention. The teaching method of the feed-forward model is detailed. The analysis of the results shows that a number of key misperceptions were held by students as to the points of difficulty in the assignment. A significant number of students also found it extremely difficult to judge the quality of past assignments against a marking guide. This direct feeding forward allowed some of the students’ tacit and false assumptions to emerge and be addressed, before they began their first major assessment, resulting in improved pass rates for the assessment.     

TIMSS 2019数学评价的框架、结果与启示

TIMSS 2019数学评价发现,中小学生的数学学习成绩正在逐渐提高,达到国际基准的比例也在提高,并存在区域、性别、领域和认识差异。同时,家庭与学校环境、师生教学准备、学生数学学习态度和数学课程与教学等背景因素都影响数学学习。为了促进我国数学教育的健康发展,我们要继承中华优秀教育传统,吸收先进教育理念,更新数学课程内容,优化教育教学评价,培养积极学习态度。     

Assessment training effects on student assessment skills and task performance in a technology-facilitated peer assessment

This study examines the impact of an assessment training module on student assessment skills and task performance in a technology-facilitated peer assessment. Seventy-eight undergraduate students participated in the study. The participants completed an assessment training exercise, prior to engaging in peer-assessment activities. During the training, students reviewed learning concepts, discussed marking criteria, graded example projects and compared their evaluations with the instructor’s evaluation. Data were collected in the form of initial and final versions of students’ projects, students’ scoring of example projects before and after the assessment training, and written feedback that students provided on peer projects. Results of data analysis indicate that the assessment training led to a significant decrease in the discrepancy between student ratings and instructor rating of example projects. In addition, the degree of student vs. instructor discrepancy was highly predictive of the quality of feedback that students provided to their peers and the effectiveness of revisions that they made to their own projects upon receiving peer feedback. Smaller discrepancies in ratings were associated with provision of higher quality peer feedback during peer assessment, as well as better revision of initial projects after peer assessment.     

If first-year students are afraid of public speaking assessments what can teachers do to alleviate such anxiety?

Public speaking and oral assessments are common in higher education, and they can be a major cause of anxiety and stress for students. This study was designed to measure the student experience of public speaking assessment tasks in a mandatory first-year course at a regional Australian university. The research conducted was an instrumental case study, with a student-centred focus. Surveys were designed to elicit student perceptions of their emotions and experience before and after engaging in public speaking skill development exercises and a public assessment task. After undertaking public speaking desensitisation and assessment, students experienced increased satisfaction and decreased fear, indecision and confusion. However, students’ perceptions of their confidence to control nerves, maintain eye contact, use gestures and comfortably speak in front of 25 people reduced – an unexpected outcome of the research. The reasons for this remain unclear, which provides a window for further research. Public speaking assessment tasks should be aligned with learning activities, and opportunities to minimise the impact of barriers to students engaging in the learning activities or tasks should be incorporated into curriculum.     

It’s not fair! Students and staff views on the equity of the procedures and outcomes of students’ choice of assessment methods

Giving students a choice of assessment methods is one approach to developing an inclusive curriculum. However, both staff and students raise concerns about its fairness, often described as its equity. This study investigates their perceptions of the fairness of the procedures and outcomes of this approach to assessment, in nine modules in a University setting. Using a tool validated as part of the study, students’ views on procedural fairness were gathered (n?=?370 students). In addition, seven module co-ordinators were interviewed. A seven-step approach to the design of the approach was used. The results demonstrated that students were satisfied that their assessment choices were fair in levels of support, feedback, information and, to a lesser extent, student workload and examples of assessment methods. In exploring fairness of the outcomes, the students’ grades were not significantly different between the two sets of choices. However, based on staff interviews, the overall grades were higher than previous cohorts and higher than average for current student cohorts in the institution. The discussion highlights some of the complex issues surrounding fairness (equity) using assessment choice and, in addition, the paper refers to some practical tools for its implementation.