National Assessment of Writing Proficiency Among Norwegian Students in Compulsory Schools

The paper reports and discusses a government‐initiated nationwide assessment of writing proficiency among Norwegian compulsory school students. A sample‐study of 7th and 10th grade students are discussed and reported with regard to challenges in measuring writing skills in a valid and reliable manner. For the 7th graders the results showed a greater proportion of narrative texts, and in contrast to more scientific oriented texts, was assessed as “lower than expected”; however, for the 10th graders the tendency was opposite with respect to central linguistic components. Low correlations between the raters were ascertained at both levels, indicating different views among teachers as to what can be expected of students' writing proficiency. The results are discussed in relation to the usefulness of the theoretical model as a basis for assessment of writing proficiency, as well as other obstacles to constructing valid and reliable writing tests.     

Influence of source credibility on students’ noticing and assessing comprehension obstacles in science texts

This study aims to analyse the effect of source credibility on students’ identification and assessment of comprehension obstacles in science texts. Source credibility was manipulated by providing 12th grade students with paragraphs supposedly taken from science textbooks or, alternatively, from students’ reports. The paragraphs contained information expected to be difficult to understand by the participating students. The students were instructed to report any comprehension obstacle they might find and to rate the comprehensibility of the paragraphs. There was no effect of source credibility on noticing and reporting comprehension obstacles in the conditions of our experiments. However, there was a significant finding regarding comprehensibility scores. The students rated the comprehensibility of the paragraphs supposedly taken from science textbooks higher than the comprehensibility of the same paragraphs supposedly taken from peer reports. The finding has implications on the way students approach the understanding of science texts. An enhancement of students’ feelings of competence in dealing with scientific subject matter would have a beneficial effect on students’ assessment and validation of information in science texts.     

Relationship between Instructional Context and Views of Nature of Science

The study investigated the relationship between instructional context (integrated and non‐integrated) that explicitly teaches about nature of science (NOS) and students’ view of NOS across different disciplines. Participants were three teachers and their students, which comprised six classes of 89 ninth‐graders and 40 10th/11th‐graders. Each teacher taught two intact sections of the same grade level within a specific science discipline. The treatment for all groups involved teaching a 5–6 week unit that included the science content and NOS. The two intact groups learned about same content; the only difference was the context of NOS instruction (integrated or non‐integrated). An open‐ended questionnaire, followed by interviews, was used to assess change in participants’ views. Results showed improvement in students’ NOS views regardless of whether NOS instruction was embedded within the content. Therefore, it was not possible to make claims about whether one instructional context is more effective than another in general terms.     

An Investigation of Students’ Personality Traits and Attitudes toward Science

The purposes of this study were to validate an instrument of attitudes toward science and to investigate grade level, type of school, and gender differences in Taiwan’s students’ personality traits and attitudes toward science as well as predictors of attitudes toward science. Nine hundred and twenty‐two elementary students and 1,954 secondary students completed the School Student Questionnaire in 2008. Factor analyses, correlation analyses, ANOVAs, and regressions were used to compare the similarities and differences among male and female students in different grade levels. The findings were as follows: female students had higher interest in science and made more contributions in teams than their male counterparts across all grade levels. As students advanced through school, student scores on the personality trait scales of Conscientiousness and Openness sharply declined; students’ scores on Neuroticism dramatically increased. Elementary school and academic high school students had significantly higher total scores on interest in science than those of vocational high and junior high school students. Scores on the scales measuring the traits of Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness were the most significant predictors of students’ attitudes toward science. Implications of these findings for classroom instruction are discussed.     

Content,format, gender and grade level differences in elementary students' ability to read science materials as measured by the cloze procedure

Present instructional trends in science indicate a need to reexamine a traditional concern in science education: the readability of science textbooks. An area of reading research not well documented is the effect of color, visuals, and page layout on readability of science materials. Using the cloze readability method, the present study explored the relationships between page format, grade level, sex, content, and elementary school students ability to read science material. Significant relationships were found between cloze scores and both grade level and content, and there was a significant interaction effect between grade and sex in favor of older males. No significant relationships could be attributed to page format and sex. In the area of science content, biological materials were most difficult in terms of readability followed by earth science and physical science. Grade level data indicated that grade five materials were more difficult for that level than either grade four or grade six materials were for students at each respective level. In eight of nine cases, the science text materials would be classified at or near the frustration level of readability. The implications for textbook writers and publishers are that science reading materials need to be produced with greater attention to readability and known design principles regarding visual supplements. The implication for teachers is that students need direct instruction in using visual materials to increase their learning from text material. Present visual materials appear to neither help nor hinder the student to gain information from text material.     

Creativity in a cooperative group setting

This study was to determine whether cooperative small groups would stimulate creativity of fith and sixth grade students more than an individualized learning environment. Student aptitudes for creative and academic work were assessed on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Verbal Form A), analysis of student created electrical circuit diagrams, and a batteries and bulbs prediction test. A measure of student perceptions was also used to indicate any changes in attitudes toward the science activity and learning environment. A posttest control group design was used with 11 I fifth and sixth grade students. Half of the population worked by themselves, while the other half (experimental) worked in a student-structured environment on the same science activity which involved creating as many different types of electrical circuits from a given set of batteries and bulbs as possible. An overall conclusion is that fifth and sixth grade students working within small cooperative groups can be more creative as measured by a figural creativity test with electrical circuits than students working alone. The implication of this study is that small cooperative groups as well as individualized groups should be used in elementary science classes when creativity is one of the instructional objectives.     

Drawing to improve metacomprehension accuracy

We examined the effect of drawing sketches on metacomprehension accuracy of science texts for 5th grade (ages 10–11) students (Study 1: N = 60, Study 2: N = 62). Students either received instruction on drawing organizational sketches, which focused on capturing the relationships described in texts, or representational sketches, which focused on capturing details described in texts. They then read and drew sketches for texts, predicted their performance, and completed tests. They completed this procedure for five texts. Metacomprehension accuracy was greater for students instructed to draw organizational sketches than for students instructed to draw representational sketches or those in a control group who did not draw (Study 2). Performance on comprehension tests was also greater for students instructed to draw organizational sketches than for students in other groups. The superior metacomprehension accuracy was explained in terms of the cue-utilization framework of metacognitive monitoring (Koriat, 1997).     

Refutations in science texts lead to hypercorrection of misconceptions held with high confidence

Misconceptions about science are often not corrected during study when they are held with high confidence. However, when corrective feedback co-activates a misconception together with the correct conception, this feedback may surprise the learner and draw attention, especially when the misconceptions are held with high confidence. Therefore, high-confidence misconceptions might be more likely to be corrected than low-confidence misconceptions. The present study investigates whether this hypercorrection effect occurs when students read science texts. Effects of two text formats were compared: Standard texts that presented factual information, and refutation texts that explicitly addressed misconceptions and refuted them before presenting factual information. Eighth grade adolescents (N = 114) took a pre-reading test that included 16 common misconceptions about science concepts, rated their confidence in correctness of their response to the pre-reading questions, read 16 texts about the science concepts, and finally took a post-test which included both true/false and open-ended test questions. Analyses of post-test responses show that reading refutation texts causes hypercorrection: Learners more often corrected high-confidence misconceptions after reading refutation texts than after reading standard texts, whereas low-confidence misconceptions did not benefit from reading refutation texts. These outcomes suggest that people are more surprised when they find out a confidently held misconception is incorrect, which may encourage them to pay more attention to the feedback and the refutation. Moreover, correction of high-confidence misconceptions was more apparent on the true/false test responses than on the open-ended test, suggesting that additional interventions may be needed to improve learners' accommodation of the correct information.     

An analysis of question asking on scientific texts explaining natural phenomena

This article relays results of a study focused on questions invoked to correct declarative knowledge deficits while readers process science texts explaining natural phenomena. Firstly, the authors focused on finding out what kind of questions are asked by students who read these texts and, secondly how task demand influences quantity and quality of formulated questions. Two hundred and eighty nine Portuguese students from 8th, 10th, and 12th grade participated in the study. The students were instructed to ask questions on two short science paragraphs that explained natural phenomena. Three task conditions were chosen. Thus, in the “Class” condition, the task was introduced as an activity aimed at developing the capacity to ask questions. In the “Examination” condition, the task was presented as a test on question generation. Finally, in the “Extra‐academic” condition the questioning task was camouflaged as a participation in a research project sponsored by the Ministry of Education and geared at the improvement of science textbooks. The results have shown that students are able to ask many questions when given an opportunity to do so. The study has also proven that students are capable of generating a large volume of causal‐antecedent questions relative to this kind of texts. Finally, no clear effects were found between grade level and/or task demand as defined in the conducted study. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 602–614, 2000     

Exploring learners’ beliefs about science reading and scientific epistemic beliefs,and their relations with science text understanding

The main purpose of this study was to explore learners' beliefs about science reading and scientific epistemic beliefs, and how these beliefs were associating with their understanding of science texts. About 400 10th graders were involved in the development and validation of the Beliefs about Science Reading Inventory (BSRI). To find the effects of reader beliefs and epistemic beliefs, a new group of 65 10th grade students whose reader and epistemic beliefs were assessed by the newly developed BSRI and an existing SEB questionnaire were invited to take part in a science reading task. Students' text understanding in terms of concept gain and text interpretations was collected and analyzed. By the correlation analysis, it was found that when students had stronger beliefs about meaning construction based on personal goals and experiences (i.e. transaction beliefs), they produced more thematic and critical interpretations of the content of the test article. The regression analysis suggested that students SEBs could predict concept gain as a result of reading. Moreover, among all beliefs examined in the study, transaction beliefs stood out as the best predictor of overall science-text understanding.     

Sex,grade, and course differences in attitudes that are related to cognitive performance in secondary science

The purpose of this study was to collect and analyze data on sexual differences in secondary school students' attitudes towards science. Attitudinal differences were also analyzed for the independent variables of science programs and grade levels. Data were collected from 988 students using a modified version of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitude Scales to represent attitudes toward science. Reliabilities of the modified science subscales were all high ( > 0.83). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze the data for the main and interaction effects of the independent variables of sex (male, female), grade level (10th, 11th, 12th), and science program (advanced placement, academic, general, terminal). Significant differences (p < 0.05) were indicated for all main effects (sex, grade, science program). Interaction effects were not found. Mean separations for the various levels of sex, grade, and science program were performed for all attitudinal subscales. Females evidenced a significantly more positive attitude (p ? 0.01) than males on three subscales: Attitude Toward Success in Science Scale, Science as a Male Domain Scale, and Teacher Scale. Although not significant, males evidenced more positive attitudes on all the remaining five subscales. Eleventh graders evidenced significantly more positive attitudes than tenth graders on all but the Effectance Motivation Scale. Students in 11th grade had more positive attitudes than 12th-grade students on all scales but Science as a Male Domain Scale; however, these differences were not significant. Tenth graders differed significantly from 12th graders on three subscales; Science Usefulness Scale, Confidence in Learning Science Scale, and Teacher Scale. Positive attitudes decreased from advanced placement to terminal programs. Academic students did not differ significantly from general students except on the Father Scale; however, they were significantly different (more positive) from the terminal students for all subscales. General students were also significantly different from terminal students except on the three subscales of Attitudes Toward Success in Science, Science as a Male Domain, and Effectance Motivation.     

The effects of dyad reading and text difficulty on third-graders’ reading achievement

This study replicated, with modifications, previous research of dyad reading using texts at various levels of difficulty (Morgan, 1997). The current project measured the effects of using above–grade-level texts on reading achievement and sought to determine the influences of dyad reading on both lead and assisted readers. Results indicate that weaker readers, using texts at two, three, and four grade levels above their instructional levels with the assistance of lead readers, outscored both proficient and less proficient students in the control group across multiple measures of reading achievement. However, the gains made by assisted readers were not significantly different relative to the various text levels. When all assessments were considered, assisted readers reading texts two grade levels above their instructional levels showed the most robust gains in oral reading fluency and comprehension. Lead readers also benefited from dyad reading and continued their respective reading developmental trajectories across measures.     

Students’ intentions towards studying science at upper-secondary school: the differential effects of under-confidence and over-confidence

Understanding students’ intentions to study science at upper-secondary school, at university, and to follow science careers continues as a central concern for international science education. Prior research has highlighted that students’ science confidence has been associated with their intentions to study science further, although under-confidence and over-confidence (lower or higher confidence than expected, given someone’s attainment) have not been considered in detail. Accordingly, this study explored whether under-confident, accurately evaluating, and over-confident students expressed different attitudes towards their science education, and explored how under-confidence and over-confidence might influence students’ science intentions. The questionnaire responses of 1523 students from 12 secondary schools in England were considered through analysis of variance and predictive modelling. Under-confident students expressed consistently lower science attitudes than accurately evaluating and over-confident students, despite reporting the same science grades as accurately evaluating students. Students’ intentions to study science were predicted by different factors in different ways, depending on whether the students were under-confident, accurate, or over-confident. For accurately evaluating and over-confident students, science intentions were predicted by their self-efficacy beliefs (their confidence in their expected future science attainment). For under-confident students, science intentions were predicted by their self-concept beliefs (their confidence in currently ‘doing well’ or ‘being good’ at science). Many other differences were also apparent. Fundamentally, under-confidence may be detrimental not simply through associating with lower attitudes, but through students considering their choices in different ways. Under-confidence may accordingly require attention to help ensure that students’ future choices are not unnecessarily constrained.     

Investigating effects of reading medium and reading purpose on behavioral engagement and textual integration in a multiple text context

The study addressed to what extent behavioral engagement and textual integration may differ when undergraduate readers work with identical printed versus digital texts in preparation for an exam versus for pleasure. We expected that working with printed texts would lead to greater engagement and better integration than working with digital texts, but that reading purpose would moderate this effect of reading medium because those reading in preparation for an exam would display greater engagement and better integration regardless of reading medium. Results showed interaction effects of reading medium with reading purpose on the behavioral engagement indicators of reading time and the length of the post-reading written products. For reading time, the interaction involved that students used longer time when reading digital and mixed texts for an exam, compared to reading for pleasure, whereas there were no difference between exam and pleasure oriented reading when reading printed texts. For the length of the written responses, students produced more text when reading printed texts for an exam than when reading printed texts for pleasure, whereas there were no differences in text production between reading for an exam and reading for pleasure when reading digital or mixed texts. Finally, there was an indirect effect of reading purpose on textual integration via text production when students read printed texts: students who read printed texts in preparation for an exam produced longer written responses compared to those who read for pleasure and, in turn, gained a more integrated understanding of the issue in question. These results are discussed in terms of the implications they offer and the avenues they suggest for future research.     

The Integration of Creative Drama in an Inquiry-Based Elementary Program: The Effect on Student Attitude and Conceptual Learning

Creative drama activities designed to help children learn difficult science concepts were integrated into an inquiry-based elementary science program. Children (n?=?38) in an upper elementary enrichment program at one primary school were the participants in this action research. The teacher-researcher taught students the Full Option Science System? (FOSS) modules of sound (fourth grade) and solar energy (fifth grade) with the integration of creative drama activities in treatment classes. A 2?×?2?×?(2) Mixed ANOVA was used to examine differences in the learning outcomes and attitudes toward science between groups (drama and non-drama) and grade levels (4th and 5th grades) over time (pre/post). Learning was measured using the tests included with the FOSS modules. A shortened version of the Three Dimension Elementary Science Attitude Survey measured attitudes toward science. Students in the drama treatment group had significantly higher learning gains (F?=?160.2, p?<?0.001) than students in the non-drama control group with students in grade four reporting significantly greater learning outcomes (F?=?14.3, p?<?0.001) than grade five. There was a significantly statistical decrease in student attitudes toward science (F?=?7.5, p?<?0.01), though a small change. Creative drama was an effective strategy to increase science conceptual learning in this group of diverse elementary enrichment students when used as an active extension to the pre-existing inquiry-based science curriculum.     

A study of the presence of evolutionary protoconcepts in pre-high school textbooks

Abstract Elementary and middle school science texts were analyzed for the presence of evolutionary protoconcepts, which are defined as topics that prepare students to study evolution in later years. Elementary and middle school texts were content-analyzed for protoconcepts in both life science and earth science. Seventeen concepts considered important for student understanding of evolution were gleaned from the misconception literature and used to review the life science texts. Concepts used to analyze other texts were chosen by exploring all texts used in the analysis for any topics that might qualify as evolutionary protoconcepts, thus generating grounded theory. Coverage of evolutionary protoconcepts varies considerably among published textbooks. We recommend using this analysis when considering textbooks for adoption and for supplementing texts currently in use. We also recommended this type of analysis of textbooks for inclusion of other topics of interest to science education research.     

The how's and why's of biological change: How learners neglect physical mechanisms in their search for meaning

This study describes the trends in students' explanations of biological change in organisms. A total of 96 student volunteers (8 students from each of 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 12th grades from 3 localities) were interviewed individually and each student was presented a series of graphics depicting natural phenomena. Students' explanations to questions of how something occurred were assigned to one of three categories (responses addressing how something occurred, why something occurred, and 'I don't know'). While the number of responses in each category was roughly equivalent in prominence across grade levels, the majority of students were unable to offer a causal explanation of how a phenomena occurred. An unexpected phenomenon was the students' predilection to redirect the interview question so they could answer them. If asked a how question, as they were in every interview instance, 32% the students answered with a 'why' response. The way biology is taught, the structure of biology or/and how we learn it could shed some light into this phenomenon and has implications for science educators.     

The role of children's journals in elementary school science activities

Abstract: This article reports on a study that investigated the ways that children's use of science journals aided their acquisition of science understandings in one kindergarten and one fourth‐grade classroom. The questions for investigation were: how does the child contextualize the science experience on the journal page? How do child‐produced graphics on the journal page reflect the children's experiences with other school texts? The study found that children recontextualized their understandings of the science investigation and phenomena by using three types of mental contexts that were reflected in their science journals: these contexts were imaginary, experienced, and investigative worlds. By drawing on these three worlds or internal contexts, the children were able to pull the external phenomenon into an internal context that was familiar to them. The child's construction of ideas about a current science experience as expressed on the journal page may reflect experiences with other conventional texts. In this study the children's representations of their imaginary, experienced and/or investigative worlds were shaped by other texts and structures such as school science texts. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 43–69, 2001