Science Achievement and Students’ Self‐confidence and Interest in Science: A Taiwanese representative sample study

The interrelationship between senior high school students’ science achievement (SA) and their self‐confidence and interest in science (SCIS) was explored with a representative sample of approximately 1,044 11th‐grade students from 30 classes attending four high schools throughout Taiwan. Statistical analyses indicated that a statistically significant correlation existed between students’ SA and their SCIS with a moderate effect size; the correlation is even higher with almost large effect sizes for a subsample of higher‐SCIS and lower‐SCIS students. Results of t‐test analysis also revealed that there were significant mean differences in students’ SA and their knowledge (including physics, chemistry, biology, and earth sciences subscales) and reasoning skill subtests scores between higher‐SCIS and lower‐SCIS students, with generally large effect sizes. Stepwise regression analyses on higher‐SCIS and lower‐SCIS students also suggested that both students’ SCIS subscales significantly explain the variance of their SA, knowledge, and reasoning ability with large effect sizes.     

A Similarity Heuristic in Children’s Possibility Judgments

Children often judge that strange and improbable events are impossible, but the mechanisms behind their reasoning remain unclear. This article (N = 250) provides evidence that young children use a similarity heuristic that compares potential events to similar known events to determine whether events are possible. Experiment 1 shows that 5- to 6-year-olds who hear about improbable events go on to judge that similar improbable events can happen. Experiment 2 shows that 5- to 6-year-olds more often affirm that improbable events can happen if told about related improbable events than if told about unrelated ones. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that 5- to 6-year-olds affirm the possibility of improbable events related to known events, but deny that related impossible events can happen.     

A Diagnostic-Remediation Teaching System for Enhancing Elementary Students’ Science Listening Comprehension

The purpose of this study was to explore elementary students’ listening comprehension changes using a Web-based teaching system that can diagnose and remediate students’ science listening comprehension problems during scientific inquiry. The 3-component system consisted of a 9-item science listening comprehension test, a 37-item diagnostic test, and 107 scaffoldings of listening strategies. The diagnostic and remediation system was trialed with grade 6 students (N?= 526) from southern Taiwan who were selected by cluster sampling. The participants were asked to take the 3 components individually on a computer. The students’ responses were collected and analyzed to document performance and changes. Results indicated that the diagnostic test had a positive influence on science listening comprehension proficiency and addressed potential problems, while the scaffolding helped remediate confirmed listening difficulties. Instructional implications for classroom diagnosis–remediation applications are discussed and future research is outlined.     

Capturing Parents’ Individual and Institutional Interest Toward Involvement in Science Education

Parents are generally less involved in their children’s science education (as compared to reading and mathematics) due to low self-efficacy and a lack of home-school communication. This study examined parental interest and attitudes in science as well as the nature of parent-to-child questioning during an interactive home, school, and community collaboration in the southeastern United States. Study results, compiled from observations, exit surveys, and interviews revealed largely positive family interactions and attitudes about science learning and increased parental interest toward involvement in elementary science. Parents frequently used productive questioning techniques during activities. These results imply that successful home, school, and community partnerships may elevate levels of parental participation in their children’s science education and the parents’ perception of themselves as being competent in assisting in science.     

Capturing and Enhancing Science Teachers’ Professional Knowledge

This paper reports research from a three-year Australian science teacher professional learning project, the Science Teaching and Learning (STaL) Project, in which groups of science teacher participants (across years K – 12) worked with academics over a one-year period as teacher researchers. Through reflecting on their experiences within the STaL Project and collecting data from their classrooms related to specific science teaching concerns, teacher participants constructed cases around particular aspects of their professional learning. The cases that these participants developed elicited rich insights into their teaching and their students’ learning of science. This paper discusses how the cases were developed by the teacher researcher participants and uses exemplars as a way of illustrating the nature of the professional knowledge developed.     

The Impact of Teachers and Their Science Teaching on Students’ ‘Science Interest’: A four-year study

There is a crisis in school science in Australia and this may be related to insufficient students developing an interest in science. This extended study looked at changes in 14 students’ interest in science as they moved through junior secondary school into Year 10. Although the majority of these students still had an interest in science in Year 10, it had fluctuated for most students from year to year. The presence or absence of simple, but effective, teaching practices, identified by these students, seems to suggest one way to retain or improve situational and, it would appear, in several cases, personal interest.     

Some Reflections on Enhancing Students＇ Interest in College Mathematics

大学数学作为基础课程的教学状况,总体是好的,成绩也是显著的。但目前数学基础课程的教学的状况应该说也有很多不尽如人意的地方,鉴于此,从倡导启发式的教学方法、培养学生的学习兴趣、激发学生主动学习和鼓励教师用心灵去教学四个方面对如何提高学生学习大学数学的兴趣作出了一些思考。     

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...     

Staff Members’ Ideas about Visitors’ Learning at Science and Technology Centres

This study investigates staff members’ ideas and assumptions about visitors’ learning at science and technology centres. It also aims to explore in what ways their reasoning intersect with existing theories about learning within the field of science and technology centre research. The results of the study reveal that the staff members allude to learning processes differently by distinguishing organized from non‐organized learning, theoretical learning from practical hands‐on learning, and serious from non‐serious learning. According to most of the staff members, these also conclude with different learning outcomes. Further, a majority of the staff members state that they do not have any scientific knowledge about learning despite the fact that they work with the construction of new exhibitions. When discussing visitors’ learning, the staff members instead refer to personal experiences, professional experiences, professional education, and external references. When it comes to how they reason about the natural scientific content, nearly all express that they use references from the natural science community and researchers’ knowledge. The article moreover discusses in what ways a socio‐cultural approach may be used in order to understand how learning arises when visitors interact with exhibits.     

Investigating Turkish Primary School Students’ Interest in Science by Using Their Self-Generated Questions

This paper reports on an attempt to investigate Turkish primary school students’ interest in science by using their self-generated questions. We investigated students’ interest in science by analyzing 1704 self-generated science-related questions. Among them, 826 questions were submitted to a popular science magazine called Science and Children. Such a self-selected sample may represent a group of students who have a higher level of motivation to seek sources of information outside their formal education and have more access to resources than the students of low social classes. To overcome this problem, 739 students were asked to write a question that they wanted to learn from a scientist and as a result 878 questions were gathered. Those students were selected from 13 different schools at 9 cities in Turkey. These schools were selected to represent a mixture of socioeconomic areas and also to cover different students’ profile. Students’ questions were classified into two main categories: the field of interest and the cognitive level of the question. The results point to the popularity of biology, astrophysics, nature of scientific inquiry, technology and physics over other science areas, as well as indicating a difference in interest according to gender, grade level and the setting in which the questions were asked. However, our study suggests that only considering questions submitted to informal learning environments, such as popular science magazines or Ask-A-Scientist Internet sites has limitations and deficiencies. Other methodologies of data collection also need to be considered in designing teaching and school science curriculum to meet students’ needs and interest. The findings from our study tend to challenge existing thinking from other studies. Our results show that self-generated questions asked in an informal and a formal setting have different patterns. Some aspects of students’ self-generated questions and their implications for policy, science curriculum reform and teaching are discussed in this paper.     

Bringing Up Girls in Science (BUGS): The Effectiveness of an Afterschool Environmental Science Program for Increasing Female Students’ Interest in Science Careers

Bringing Up Girls in Science (BUGS) was an afterschool program for 4th and 5th grade girls that provided authentic learning experiences in environmental science as well as valuable female mentoring opportunities in an effort to increase participants’ academic achievement in science. BUGS participants demonstrated significantly greater amounts of gain in science knowledge as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in Science (ITBS-S). The original BUGS participants and contrasts have now completed high school and entered college, allowing researchers to assess the long-term impact of the BUGS program. Fourteen former BUGS participants completed two instruments to assess their perceptions of science and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Their results were compared to four contrast groups composed entirely of females: 12 former BUGS contrasts, 10 college science majors, 10 non-science majors, and 9 current STEM professionals. Results indicate that BUGS participants have higher perceptions of science careers than BUGS contrasts. There were no significant differences between BUGS participants, Science Majors, and STEM professionals in their perceptions of science and STEM careers, whereas the BUGS contrast group was significantly lower than BUGS participants, Science Majors, and STEM Professionals. Additional results and implications are discussed within.     

Tacit Knowledge in Expert Coaching: Science or Art?

Effective coaching is a mixture of pedagogy and principles of sciences, e.g., motor skill acquisition, sociology, and physiology, often referred to as the science of coaching. Instinctive or intuitive coaching has often been incorrectly viewed as the art of coaching. More important should be how coaches develop knowledge, how they access that knowledge at the appropriate times and how this affects their decision-making process. The study of expert coaches should allow inferences to be drawn from their development and applied to coach education. This article intends to clarify coaching expertise and examine the role of tacit knowledge within coaching. The lack of a clear development pathway for aspiring expert coaches is a clear indicator that the current coach education system needs review. Any effective education system should be based on knowledge and understanding rather than mimicry and the implications for the future of coach education are considered.     

Bridging the Gap? A Comparative,Retrospective Analysis of Science Literacy and Interest in Science for Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Australian Students

Previous research has shown that indigenous students in Australia do not enjoy equal educational outcomes with other Australians. This secondary analysis of PISA 2006 confirmed that this continues to be the case in science literacy for secondary students. However, the analysis also revealed that indigenous Australian students held interest in science equal to that of their non‐indigenous peers, and that observed variations in science literacy performance were most strongly explained by variations in reading literacy. These findings hold important implications for teachers, teacher educators, policy‐makers, and researchers. Firstly, acknowledging and publicly valuing indigenous Australian science knowledge through rethinking school science curriculum seems an important approach to engaging indigenous students and improving their literacy in science. Secondly, appropriate professional learning for practising teachers and the incorporation of indigenous knowing in science methods training in teacher preparation seems warranted. Additionally, we offer a number of questions for further reflection and research that would benefit our understanding of ways forward in closing the science literacy gap for indigenous students. Whilst this research remains firmly situated within the Australian educational context, we at the same time believe that the findings and implications offered here hold value for science education practitioners and researchers in other countries with similar populations striving to achieve science literacy for all.     

Is ‘Learning' Science Enough? – A Cultural Model of Religious Students of Science in an Australian Government School

This paper investigates the cognitive experiences of four religious students studying evolutionary biology in an inner city government secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. The participants in the study were identified using the Religious Background and Behaviours questionnaire (Connors, Tonigan, & Miller, 1996 Connors, G. J., Tonigan, J. S., & Miller, W. R. (1996). A measure of religious background and behaviour for use in behaviour change research. Psychology of Addictive Behaviours, 10, 90–96. doi:10.1037/0893-164X.10.2.90[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Participants were interviewed and asked to respond to questions about their cognitive experiences of studying evolutionary biology. Students' responses were analysed using cultural analysis of discourse to construct a cultural model of religious students of science. This cultural model suggests that these students employ a human schema and a non-human schema, which assert that humans are fundamentally different from non-humans in terms of origins and that humans have a transcendental purpose in life. For these students, these maxims seem to be challenged by their belief that evolutionary biology is dictated by metaphysical naturalism. The model suggests that because the existential foundation of these students is challenged, they employ a believing schema to classify their religious explanations and a learning schema to classify evolutionary biology. These schemas are then hierarchically arranged with the learning schema being made subordinate to the believing schema. Importantly, these students are thus able to maintain their existential foundation while fulfilling the requirements of school science. However, the quality of this “learning” is questionable.     

Children’s and Adolescents’ Specific Interest in Science and Technology,Participation in Out-of-School Activities and Inclination to Become Scientists

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Recently, the literature has repeatedly reported an interesting decrease in science and technology (S&T) among youngsters, and a drop of...