Experiments in teaching andlearning natural sciences

editors

publisher

Matgorzata Nodzyhsk

Pawet Ciesla

Agnieszka Kania

Pedagogical University of Krakôw

Krakôw 2014

The monograph is editcd by:Malgorzata Nodzytîska, Pavvel Ciesia, Agnieszka Kania

RewieversKrzysztof Kruczala, Jih' Rychtera, Mariola Tracz

Cover:Pawel Ciesia

ISBN 978-83-7271-878-5

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE PARTICIPATION OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS INA PHYSICS LABORATORY

Louis Trudel, Abdeljalil Metioui

The context and purpose of thc rcsearch

In high school, thé science laboratory has always been considcrcd an csscntial part of scienceéducation in sccondary schools since it allows sludents to engage in scientific inquiry. Studcntscan think by themselves, explore new ideas, and draw their own conclusions. Moreover, thésuident acquires manual and intellectual skills that will help him solvc thc problcms of modemlife. While emphasizing thé distinctiveness of thé laboratory in teaching science, Hofstein andLunetta (2004) note that rcsearch has not yct identified educational situations in which thélaboratory would be thé most effective in terras of learning. In this regard, participation is passiveand at a low cognitive level [Kind, Kind, Hofstein & Wilson, 2011]. In gênerai, thé objectivesand melhods used in thé laboratory arc choscn by thc tcacher. The student participation concernsmainly thé procédures they follow to thé Ictter aecording to teacher's instructions and directionsprovided in laboratory notebooks. It is therefore not surprising that thc planning skills and théway lo conduct experiments are lacking among students [Hoffstein & Lunetta, 2004],

Following thèse f indings, our research attempts to answcr thc following question: Ilow canwe enhance students' participation in thé laboratory so that they are active and engaged in a trucscientific investigation? To answer this question, one must first corne up with a définition ofstudents' participation in ternis of behaviors that arc cxpectcd in thé science laboratory and thatmay be observed in a quantitative and objective way. In our rcsearch, participation is dcfined asthc timc spcnt by thc student to achieve tasks in thé science laboratory.

With this définition in mind, research has identified several factors that may influencestudent participation in thé laboratory, eithcr associatcd with teaching/tcachcr, or with students'characteristics. With respect to teaching, one may say that laboratory activités are executedprimarily in small groups. Howevcr, this type of grouping could be detrimental to participationbecause, most of thé time, students are not supervised by an adult [Furtak, Seidel, Ivcrson &Briggs, 2012]. Moreover, behavior rules in thé laboratory are less rigid and thé prevailing rate,delennined by students, is slowcr. Considering thc lack of guidance in thé laboratory, students'préparation to laboratory may bc important lo foster students' participation in it [Davidowitz,Rollnick, & Fakudze, 2005]. I lence, a discussion that takes into account thc students' conceptionsabout thc phenomena studied and that helps them to construct new knowledge from it is likely tochange thé way they engage in laboratory activitics, that is to say their participation [Kind, Kind,Hofstein & Wilson, 2011].

With respect to factors rclatcd to students' characteristics, thé discovery of a possible linkbetween students' participation in thé laboratory and académie success oriented our research toidentiry factors that may influence their participation [Furtak & al., 2012]. With regard to gendcr,boys gencrally participatc diffcrcntly than girls in thé laboratory [Alexopoulou & Driver, 1997].When boys and girls work as a team in thé laboratory, thé task of girls is usually resrricted toobserve and record data while boys tend to manipulate thc instruments and pcrform thé expérience[She, 1999]. Considering thé factors above, our research objective is to evaluate thé influence ofthcsc factors (prior discussion, type of task in thc laboratory, gendcr. and académie achievement),and their reciprocal interactions, on students' participation in laboratory.

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Methods

The research was conducted in a French Canadian high school. The samplc of high schoolstudents was drawn from a population following an inlroductory course in physics. The samplecontained one hundred and two students (122), sixty girls (60) and forty-two boys (42). Thèsestudents were divided into four groups. Two teachcrs volunteered to experiment thé teachingstrategy with thcir two groups cach. The first teacher had many years of expérience in teachingwhile thé second one was new to thé profession.

To measure participation, we used thé observation grid of participation of Tobin ( 1986).According to this grid, students' participation in thé laboratory Is comprised of thc followingcatégories: 1 ) attention, 2) recall of facts, 3) data collection, 4) understanding, 5) quantification, 6)planning, 7) generalization, 8) non-cognitive, 9) ofF-task. A meeting bctwcen thé researcher andthé two teachers a fcw days bcfore thc experiment allowed thé less experienced teacher to practicequestioning stratégies used in thé prier discussion, thc other teacher observing thé practice.Students' participation in one laboratory (preceded by a pre-laboratory discussion) was comparedto thé students' participation in thé other laboratories (preceded by traditional préparation). Thcscience concept of thé pre-laboratory discussion was chosen as thc equilibrium of forces (as wasthc following laboratory) while thé other science concepts covered in thc traditional préparationfor thé laboratory (and hence thc laboratory that followed) were varied: motion in one dimensionand two dimensions, rclationship bctween weight and mass, rclationship between length andapplied force on a spring, free fall motion. A measure of thc participation of cach student inthc laboratory was madc randomly cach five seconds by two observers with an average degreeof agreement of 0,77. Therefore, thé effect of students' préparation to laboratory as well as thccffcct of other factors (gender and académie achievement) on participation was assessed using amultivariate analysis of variancc of rcpcatcd mcasures [Howell, 2008].

Résulte

Inspecting results from Tab. 01, one can sec that pre-laboratory préparation had a signiticantinfluence on thé time spent by thé student in thé varions catégories of participation in thc firstand fourth groups. This différence could also be assigned to a différent type of task carried ontin thé laboratory. Moreover, this différence, in thé first group, may bc dcrived from thé factthat students of thé first teacher were doing thé analysis and discussion of their results in théclassroom. However, différence, in thé fourth group of students of thé second teacher, bctwcenlaboratories' participation were also statistically significant, while his students were conductingthé analysis and discussion of thcir results in thé laboratory room.

[n ail groups, participation signifkantly influences time spent by thé student. Thus, one of thécatégories of participation is significantly différent from other catégories. This means that studentsdo not spend thé samc time in each category. This finding may seem obvious. It encourages us toseek causes of this allocation of time students betwccn thé différent catégories of participation ina laboratory. Thèse différences may be due to how students pcrccivc thé task and allocate thcirtime accordingly.

In ail groups, there is a significant interaction bctwcen laboratory préparation, or thc type oflaboratory task, and students' participation. Thus, thé laboratory préparation, or type oflaboratorytasks, will change thé time allocation of students between participation catégories. This resuitenables us hope to change thé participation of thé student in thé laboratory using an appropriatcpréparation or choosing a différent type of task in thc laboratory.

In thé third group, there was a significant interaction belween gender and participation.So, in thé third group, participation differs by student's gender. In thé fourth group, therewas a significant interaction between gender, laboratory préparation (or laboratory tasks) andparticipation. It is rcasonablc to assume that thé influence of laboratory préparation (or thé type oftask in thé laboratory) on studenls' participation in thc laboratory differs according to gender. It is18

ihcrcfore important to considcr thc gender of thé student in ihe choice of laboratory préparation orthé type of task to bc performed in thc laboratory if one wishes to influence students' participationin thc laboratory.

"ab. 01 . Mullivariatc analysis of factors that may influence participation in thc four groups.Source of variation

Lab prcp'Achicvcmcnt X Lab prepGcndcr X I.ah prep

GroupJ

10.000*0.6350,584

(îender X Achievemenf1 X Lab prcp 0.480Participation 0,000*Achievement X Participation i 0.945Gender X Participation 10.193Gender X Achievement X Participation ! 0.8 1 0Lab prep X Participation . 0.000*Achievement X Lab prep X Participation 0.768Gender X Lab prep X Participation i 0.034*Gender X Achievement X Lab prep XParticipation

0,711

20,7940,8850,8070,8860,000*0,4390,8920,4440,000*0,7330.2100,751

3

0,000*0,099

"0,02*0,3100,001*0,3820,0850,548

10,024*0,0930,024*0,0930,000*0,8160,3570.8460.002*0,1050.0760.628

Lcgcnd:1 : Lab prcp stands for préparation to thc laboratory2: Achievement stands for académie achicvcmcnt3: Results shown arc thé probabilities associaled with différent groups for each variable or interaction ofvariables (source of variation)*: To thc nght of a number, it mcans that thc rcsult is significant at alpha = 0.05

Académie performance docs not influence s igni l icant ly participation nor docs it influenceindirectly students' participation, by interaction with other factors. This rather surprising rcsultcould be explained by thé fact that laboratoires contain mainly manual activities likely to appeal tostudents with various académie achievemenl results. It could also bc argucd that thé laboratoricsare focused primarily on data collection and stimulate participation of ail students equivalcntly.Indeed, if thé laboratories had containcd tasks rclatcd to planning or gcneralization, it is possiblethat thé participation of students with high académie achievemenl would be différent from thcparticipation of students with low académie performance.

Conclusions and implications

Our results show that students' participation varies from one laboratory to another. Thisvariation can be explained by thc préparation to thé laboratory (traditional versus discussion),thé différent type of tasks askcd from students in thé laboratory, or a combination of thé two.Girls participate differently frorn boys in thc laboratory. Académie achicvcmcnt has no ettecton thé participation of students in thc laboratory. The identification of thé différent factors andtheir relationships should allow us to bettcr understand how students participate in laboratory anddevelop interventions to improve it.

Regarding thé limitations of our research, since thé order of treatments assigned to différentgroups was nol made randomly, wc cannot climinate thé interaction between trcatment andstibjects' maturation as a possible source of thc cffccts measured. Furthcrmore, thé choice of aconvcniencc sample does not allow generalizing results to thc population of high school studcntsfollowing an introductory physics course. Finally, thé approach taken in this research has allowedus to identify some of thé main factors likely to influence participation in laboratory. Subséquentstudies are needed to détermine conditions that encourage students to engage in a gcnuinescientific approach and thus acquire thc scientific skills aimed by high school science curriculum.

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Références:

Alexopoulou. t. & Driver. R. ( 1997). Gendcr différences in small group discussion in physics. InlcrnationalJournal of Science éducation, 19(4), 393-406.

application of a nibrie l'or analvsis of novice studcnts' laboralory rlow diagrams.

Davidowit/. Bette. Marissa Rollnick, et Cynthia Fakud/c. 2005. Development and

1-urtak. !;..V1.. Seidel. T., Iverson. H.. Briggs, D.C. (2012). Expérimental and Quasi-Expérimental Sludics ofInquiry-Bascd Science Tcaching: A Mcta-Analysis. Rcvicw of Educational Research. 82(3) 300-329.

Hofslein. A., & Lunetta. V. N. (2004). The laboratory in science éducation: Foundation for thé 21st ccnlury.Science Education. 88. 28 -54.

Howell. D.C. (2008). Méthodes statistiques en sciences humaines. Bruxelles: De Bocck.

International Journal of Science Education. 27( 1 ). 43-59.

Kind, P.K.. Kind. V., Hofstcin.A.. & Wilson. J. (2011 ). Pecr Argumentation in thé School

Science Laboratory l:\piorinu elTects of task featurcs. International Journal of Science Education, 33( 18),2527 -2558

She, Hsia-C'hing. (1999). Studcnls' knowlcdgc construction in small groups in thé seventh grade biologylaboralory: Verbal communication and physical engagement. International Journal of Science Education.21(10), 1051-1066.

Tobin. Kcnnelh. (1986). Student task involvement and achicvemcnt in proccss oricnted science aelivilies.Science Education. 7()( I ), 61-72.

Louis Trudel1, Abdeljalil Metioui2

1 - Université d'Ottawa

2 - Université du Québec à Montréal

Canada

ltrudel@uottawa.ca. metioui.abdelialilffiuqam.ca

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