SCIENCE TEACHING METHODS PREFERRED BY GRADE 9 STUDENTS IN FINLAND

Students find science relevant to society, but they do not find school science interesting. This survey study analyzes Finnish grade 9 students’ actual experiences with science teaching methods and their preferences for how they would like to study science. The survey data were collected from 3,626 grade 9 students (1,772 girls and 1,832 boys) across randomly sampled secondary schools. Students were asked to evaluate how often a particular teaching method is used in science (chemistry and physics) teaching and how often they would like to see the teaching method used. Data were analyzed using nonparametric tests. Boys seemed to be more satisfied with current and traditional science teaching methods like direct teaching, solving basic problems, reading textbooks, and conducting practical work, while girls desired more discussion. Students who are interested in school science or think that school science is relevant in everyday life would like more creative activities such as brainstorming and project work. Results indicated that understanding the connection between student interest and teaching method preferences, especially interpreting interested students’ desire for creative activities, are important aspects for future research.     

Promoting Students’ Interest and Motivation Towards Science Learning: the Role of Personal Needs and Motivation Orientations

This study aimed to design a teaching sequence for science education that enabled lower secondary school students to enhance their motivation towards science. Further, it looked to examine the way the designed teaching sequence affected students with different motivational profiles. Industry site visits, with embodied theory-based motivational features were included as part of the designed teaching sequence. The sequence was implemented in Finland and Greece with 54 participants, 27 from each country. Quantitative data was collected using the Evaluation of Science Inquiry Activities Questionnaire, based on the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory but did not map the expected outcomes. Interviews, however, showed that students with different motivational profiles found aspects within the module that met their psychological needs as explained by Self-Determination Theory. The results offer a perspective to adolescents’ psychological needs along with some insights into how students mediate the way they value an activity in the context of science education.     

Science classroom activities and student situational engagement

This study examines the association between student situational engagement and classroom activities in secondary school science classrooms in Finland and the U.S. Situational engagement is conceptualised as times when students feel that a task is interesting and challenging to them and that they have the skills to complete it (see Schneider et al., 2016. Investigating optimal learning moments in U.S. and Finnish science classes. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(3), 400–421. doi:10.1002/tea.21306). Data on situational engagement and classroom activities were obtained using the experience sampling method (ESM) from 247 Finnish students in 13 secondary science classrooms and 281 U.S. students in 18 secondary science classrooms. In both samples, the students tended to be situationally engaged only a small proportion of the time during their science classes. However, the Finnish students were more likely than the U.S. students to report being situationally engaged. To investigate when the students were most likely to report being situationally engaged, hierarchical logistic regression models were employed, which suggested that some classroom activities were associated with higher levels of student situational engagement than others. The Finnish students were more likely to report being situationally engaged when calculating and presenting scientific information. In the U.S., the students were more likely to report being situationally engaged while discussing scientific information and less likely when listening to the teacher. The results suggest that situational engagement is momentary and associated with specific science classroom activities.     

Investigating Situational Interest in Primary Science Lessons

Pupils’ interest has been one of the major concerns in science education research because it can be seen as a gateway to more personalised forms of interest and motivation. However, methods to investigate situational interest in science teaching and learning are not broadly examined. This study compares the pupils’ observed situational interest and their expressed situational interest. One class of Finnish fourth-graders (N?=?22, age 9–10 years) participated in a heat transfer lesson. The lesson encompassed an interactive demonstration with a thermal camera, teacher-led discussions and the conduct and presentation of a collaborative inquiry task. Pupils expressed their interest levels (scale: 1?=?very boring, 5?=?very interesting) by using an electronic response system called a ‘clicker’. The measurement took place 15 times during the lesson, with 1 measurement being just a rehearsal. The lesson was video recorded, and visible aspects of interest at the measurement time points were analysed. Reported and observational data were compared. In most cases, the observations did not yield data compatible with the pupils’ own evaluations, indicating that most pupils’ expressed interest is not easily interpreted through observation of their facial expressions and behaviour. In general, the interest of the group as a whole seems to diminish during the lesson. We argue that in order to maintain and increase pupils’ interest, their evaluations should be taken into account in lesson planning. Video-based research might also be further enriched and validated by employing the participants’ own expressions. The clicker is a suitable means of collecting primary pupils’ experiences concerning their interest levels.     

Designing a user‐friendly microcomputer‐based laboratory package through the factor analysis of teacher evaluations

In this study we analyse how the experiences of chemistry teachers on the use of a Microcomputer‐Based Laboratory (MBL), gathered by a Likert‐scale instrument, can be utilized to develop the new package Empirica 2000. We used exploratory factor analysis to identify the essential features in a large set of questionnaire data to see how our previous MBL package, Empirica for Windows 4.0, looks from the point of view of experienced chemistry teachers. Together, a six‐factor solution explained 50.1% of the common variance and indicated the teachers' perspective on the use of a MBL package in chemical education. The factors were: ‘Versatility of the tool’, ‘User interface’, ‘Data presentation’, ‘Data acquisition’, ‘Set up’, and ‘Usability’. Based on the data, some conclusions concerning the software development and desired new features in the prototype software are discussed in the framework of each factor.     

TEACHER’S REFLECTION OF INQUIRY TEACHING IN FINLAND BEFORE AND DURING AN IN-SERVICE PROGRAM: EXAMINATION BY A PROGRESS MODEL OF COLLABORATIVE REFLECTION

In inquiry-based science education, there have been gradual shifts in research interests: the nature of scientific method, the debates on the effects of inquiry learning, and, recently, inquiry teaching. However, many in-service programs for inquiry teaching have reported inconsistent results due to the static view of classroom inquiries and due to the partial perspective between individual and collaborative reflections. Thus, by means of a theoretical progress model of collaborative reflection, this qualitative research aims to investigate reflections of four participant teachers before and during a half-year in-service teacher program. The model captures the following four interactions for each individual teacher and among the teacher cohort: belief to practice, practice to belief, stimulation, and reinforcement. The audio–video data and their quantification allowed identification of the teachers’ consistent prior beliefs and practices as a multiplicity of inquiry teaching and their interwoven progress during the program. The findings are further discussed in terms of the implicit development and the richer repertoire.     

Tracing the Transition from Study to a Contemporary Creative Working Life: The Trajectories of Professional Musicians

The classical music academy is a site dominated by traditional meanings of creative practice and an image of the professional creative career as solo performer that is fully available to only a very few students after graduating. The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to explore career-young professional pianists’ talk about the transition from study within a music academy to working life. The focus is on the ways in which they characterize the nature and significance of this transition from very traditional practice and study, and how they (re)negotiate their identities as professional musicians and pianists in contemporary working life. Four classical pianists were interviewed in-depth about their musicianship, including their transition from study to working life. The qualitative analyses presented here suggest that, as they talked about their transitions and developing musicianship, the speakers constructed, re-constructed and oriented to notions of professional trajectories. Such trajectories are emergent, relational and contextually constituted (Sawyer 2003; MacDonald and Miell 2002; Moran and John-Steiner 2004). Rather than being fixed or dependent on communal expectations, they reflect creative freedom and independence, encompassing multiple influences. Crucially, the transition from study to working life is implicated in the process of assuming agency in respect of one’s own musicianship and career—a process that involves identity work, the (re)negotiation of pathways, narrations and trajectories.     

The Lifeworld Earth and a Modelled Earth

The goal of this paper is to study the question of whether a phenomenological view of the Earth could be empirically endorsed. The phenomenological way of thinking considers the Earth as a material entity, but not as an object as viewed in science. In the learning science tradition, tracking the process of the conceptual change of the shape of the Earth, science’s view of the Earth as an object—a celestial body—has been applied. I reanalysed data published in Vosniadou and Brewer’s (Cognit psychol 24:535–585, 1992) seminal paper. According to my reanalysis of their interview material, it is plausible to conclude that the Earth as an infinite surface is the way to experience the Earth. Further, the ‘dual Earth model’ is the first model of the Earth as an object. I conclude that experiences in the lifeworld need to be taken into consideration more seriously in science education research.