Students’ Views on Difficulties in Learning Histology

The aim of this study was to provide a better understanding of the main difficulties hindering undergraduate biology students in learning histology. The study utilized a self-administered questionnaire which included three closed-ended and two open-ended questions: (1) if students had difficulty in learning about each tissue type; (2) what might be the problem in learning about the tissue at hand; (3) which topics were the most difficult; (4) what were the possible reasons that made image identification of tissue types difficult; and (5) how to improve the course curriculum from a student perspective. The survey was administered to 139 undergraduate biology students enrolled in a histology course, of which 101 surveys were completed and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The topics that students experienced the most difficulties with were: nervous tissue, plant tissues, bone tissues, and glandular epithelial tissue. The main reasons students experienced difficulties with these tissue types, according to the students themselves, were the nature of the topic, grasping the terminology used, and insufficient teaching time. Students suggested the adoption of strategies such as: teaching based on practical tasks; reducing the content of the histology curriculum; adding anatomy subjects; and making histology education more interesting.     

Developing Middle School Students’ Interest in Learning Science and Geology Through Slowmation

Research in Science Education - Given that interest is associated with learning in educational research, understanding how its development can be supported in different learning contexts represents...     

College Students’ Time Management: a Self-Regulated Learning Perspective

Educational Psychology Review - Despite its recognized importance for academic success, much of the research investigating time management has proceeded without regard to a comprehensive...     

Enhancing Students’ Conceptual Understanding by Engaging Science Text with Reflective Writing as a Hermeneutical Circle

Students can have great difficulty reading scientific texts and trying to cope with the professor in the classroom. Part of the reason for students’ difficulties is that for a student taking a science gateway course the language, ontology and epistemology of science are akin to a foreign culture. There is thus an analogy between such a student and an anthropologist spending time among a native group in some remote part of the globe. This brings us naturally to the subject of hermeneutics. It is through language that we attempt to understand an alien culture. The hermeneutical circle involves the interplay between our construct of the unfamiliar with our own outlook that deepens with each pass. It can be argued that for novice students to acquire a full understanding of scientific texts, they also need to pursue a recurrent construction of their comprehension of scientific concepts. In this paper it is shown how an activity, reflective-writing, can enhance students’ understanding of concepts in their textbook by getting students to approach text in the manner of a hermeneutical circle. This is illustrated using studies made at three post-secondary institutions.     

Students’ Perceptions and Emotions Toward Learning in a Flipped General Science Classroom

Recently, the inverted instruction methodologies are gaining attentions in higher educations by claiming that flipping the classroom engages more effectively students with the learning process. Besides, students’ perceptions and emotions involved in their learning process must be assessed in order to gauge the usability of this relatively new instruction methodology, since it is vital in the educational formation. For this reason, this study intends to evaluate the students’ perceptions and emotions when a flipped classroom setting is used as instruction methodology. This research was conducted in a general science course, sophomore of the Primary Education bachelor degree in the Training Teaching School of the University of Extremadura (Spain). The results show that the students have the overall positive perceptions to a flipped classroom setting. Particularly, over 80 % of them considered that the course was a valuable learning experience. They also found this course more interactive and were willing to have more courses following a flipped model. According to the students’ emotions toward a flipped classroom course, the highest scores were given to the positive emotions, being fun and enthusiasm along with keyword frequency test. Then, the lowest scores were corresponded to negative emotions, being boredom and fear. Therefore, the students attending to a flipped course demonstrated to have more positive and less negative emotions. The results obtained in this study allow drawing a promising tendency about the students’ perceptions and emotions toward the flipped classroom methodology and will contribute to fully frame this relatively new instruction methodology.     

Effects of a Collaborative Science Intervention on High Achieving Students’ Learning Anxiety and Attitudes toward Science

This study investigated the effects of a collaborative science intervention on high achieving students’ learning anxiety and attitudes toward science. Thirty‐seven eighth‐grade high achieving students (16 boys and 21 girls) were selected as an experimental group who joined a 20‐week collaborative science intervention, which integrated and utilized an innovative teaching strategy. Fifty‐eight eighth‐grade high achieving students were selected as the comparison group. The Secondary School Student Questionnaire was conducted to measure all participants’ learning anxiety and attitudes toward science. In addition, 12 target students from the experimental group (i.e., six active and six passive students) were recruited for weekly classroom observations and follow‐up interviews during the intervention. Both quantitative and qualitative findings revealed that experimental group students experienced significant impact as seen through increased attitudes and decreased anxiety of learning science. Implications for practice and research are provided.     

Learning Difficulties in School Science‐‐Towards a Working Hypothesis

Summaries

English

In an attempt to explain success and failure in problem‐solving by science students, the authors suggest that problem‐solving ability is associated with students’ ability to organize or ‘chunk’ the information provided in a problem into memorizable patterns. In line with general psychological findings, a short‐term memory capacity of 7 ± 2 chunks is accepted. If the short‐term memory is overloaded with too many pieces of information, the processing of this information (and, hence, effective problem‐solving) cannot take place unless such information can be effectively chunked. This hypothesis, which is derived from research studies, is exemplified by reference to chemical problems and its educational implications are discussed.     

Elementary Students’ Learning of Materials Science Practices Through Instruction Based on Engineering Design Tasks

Materials science, which entails the practices of selecting, testing, and characterizing materials, is an important discipline within the study of matter. This paper examines how third grade students’ materials science performance changes over the course of instruction based on an engineering design challenge. We conducted a case study of nine students who participated in engineering design-based science instruction with the goal of constructing a stable, quiet, thermally comfortable model house. The learning outcome of materials science practices was assessed by clinical interviews conducted before and after the instruction, and the learning process was assessed by students’ workbooks completed during the instruction. The interviews included two materials selection tasks for designing a sturdy stepstool and an insulated pet habitat. Results indicate that: (1) students significantly improved on both materials selection tasks, (2) their gains were significantly positively associated with the degree of completion of their workbooks, and (3) students who were highly engaged with the workbook’s reflective record-keeping tasks showed the greatest improvement on the interviews. These findings suggest the important role workbooks can play in facilitating elementary students’ learning of science through authentic activity such as engineering design.     

Elementary Science Students’ Motivation and Learning Strategy Use: Constructivist Classroom Contextual Factors in a Life Science Laboratory and a Traditional Classroom

The purpose of this study was to describe the influence of constructivist classroom contextual factors in a life science laboratory and a traditional science classroom on elementary students’ motivation and learning strategy use. The Constructivist Teaching Inventory was used to examine classroom contextual factors. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire was used to examine student motivation and learning strategies. A Wilcoxon nonparametric test determined that constructivist teaching practices were found to occur more often in the life laboratory than in the regular classroom. Although constructivist teaching practices increased at each observation time in both the regular classroom and in the life laboratory, a Friedman test determined that they were not statistically significant increases. Paired sample t tests determined that student motivation and learning strategies were higher in the life laboratory than in the regular classroom overall as well as at each survey time except for learning strategies at Post 1. A 2 × 4 between 3 within repeated measure ANOVA determined that student MSLQ motivation and learning strategy scores in the regular classroom varied statistically significantly by teacher. Student MSLQ motivation and learning strategy scores in the life laboratory varied statistically significantly by teacher. To triangulate data, individual interviews of students were conducted at the end of the semester and revealed students regard the life laboratory as an asset to their science study; however, students do appreciate and value working in the learning environment that the regular classroom provides.     

Effects of Teacher Professional Development and Science Classroom Learning Environment on Students’ Science Achievement

Research in Science Education - Science classroom learning environment (CLE) and science teacher professional development (PD) are two important factors in students’ science learning....     

Investigating Students’ Conceptions of Technology-Assisted Science Learning: a Drawing Analysis

This study investigated high school students’ conceptions of technology-assisted science learning via drawing analysis, and explored how students with different degrees of computer experience and science learning self-efficacy may show different conceptions via their drawings. The participants included 335 senior high school students in Taiwan (179 male and 156 female). All of them were asked by guiding questions to make two drawings to represent their conceptions of technology-assisted science learning in actual and ideal contexts, respectively. Their background information including computer experience and science learning self-efficacy were obtained using self-reported questionnaires. Through drawing analysis, seven categories of conceptions of technology-assisted science learning were identified, including types of technology, location of learning, types of learning activities, content of learning, participants of learning activities, affordance of learning technology, and effects of learning technology. The results further revealed that the students’ conceptions of actual and ideal technology-assisted science learning significantly differed in some sub-categories of all categories except the category of participants of learning activities. Moreover, students’ computer experience and science learning self-efficacy may link to different conceptions of technology-assisted science learning. Future research and directions are also discussed.

     

Teaching and Learning Science in Authoritative Classrooms: Teachers’ Power and Students’ Approval in Korean Elementary Classrooms

Research in Science Education - This study aims to understand interactions in Korean elementary science classrooms, which are heavily influenced by Confucianism. Ethnographic observations of two...     

Uncovering Malaysian Secondary School Students’ Academic Hardiness in Science,Conceptions of Learning Science,and Science Learning Self-Efficacy: a Structural Equation Modelling Analysis

The objective of this study was to explore the relationships between academic hardiness in science, conceptions of learning science, and science learning self-efficacy among Malaysian middle school students. The respondents were 320 eighth-grade students from two selected Malaysian middle schools. Three questionnaires were used for this survey: Academic Hardiness in Science (AHS) regarding “commitment,” Conceptions of Learning Science (COLS), including “memorizing,” “calculating and practicing,” and “understanding and seeing in a new way,” and Science Learning Self-Efficacy (SLSE), consisting of “cognition,” “practical work,” “everyday application,” and “science communication.” These three questionnaires were validated and found to be reliable for measuring students’ AHS, COLS, and SLSE. Pearson’s correlation findings indicated that AHS was significantly and positively correlated to all the factors in COLS and SLSE, and all the factors in COLS were significantly and positively correlated to all the factors in SLSE. The relationships among AHS, COLS, and SLSE were then identified by the structural equation model technique. Students with a high commitment to learning science, and who perceived learning science as understanding and seeing in a new way are prone to have confidence at all levels of science learning self-efficacy.

     

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Context-based learning has become a widespread approach in science education. While positive motivational effects of such approaches have been well established empirically, clear results regarding cognitive aspects of students’ learning are still missing. In this article, we argue that this circumstance might be mainly rooted in the definition of context itself. Based on this argument, we shift from the issue of if contexts are cognitively beneficial to focus on the question of which composition of contexts is, at least by tendency, more effective than another. Based on theories of conceptual change, we therefore conducted a small-scale intervention study comparing two groups of students learning in different sets of contexts focusing on the same scientific concept—the cross-cutting concept of energy. Results suggest that learning in a more heterogeneous set of contexts eases transfer to new contexts in comparison to learning in a more homogeneous set of contexts. However, a more abstract understanding of the energy concept does not seem to be fostered by either of these approaches. Theoretical as well as practical implications of these finding are discussed.     

Effects of Cooperative Learning on Students’ Understanding of Metallic Bonding

The present study focused on investigating the effectiveness of instruction via newly developed teaching materials based on cooperative learning when compared to a traditional approach, on ninth grade students’ understanding of metallic bonding. Fifty-seven ninth grade science students from two science classes in the same high school participated in this study. The same teacher taught metallic bonding with cooperative learning to an experimental group (N = 28) and with a traditional teacher centred approach to a control group (N = 29). Students’ conceptual understanding of metallic bonding was measured using the Metallic Bonding Concept Test. The results from the Student’s t test indicated that the mean score of the students in the experimental group was significantly higher in the experimental group (78.60, SD = 8.62), than in the control group (54.33, SD = 9.11) after treatment. In the light of the results from the concept test and individual interviews, the misconceptions related to metallic bonding were found less in the experimental group than traditional. Five of these misconceptions were firstly identified in this study. The individual interviews which were done with students from experimental group immediately after the instruction showed that students had positive perceptions about their cooperative work experiences.