PUBLICATION INFORMATION
TITLE OF PUBLICATION
POPULARITY AND RELEVANCE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION LITERACY:
USING A CONTEXT-BASED APPROACH
NAME OF AUTHOR(S)
Miia Rannikmäe, Moonika Teppo, Jack Holbrook
NAME OF PUBLISHER
International Council of Associations for Science Education
LANGUAGE OF PUBLICATION
English
PUBLICATION TYPOLOGY
Newspaper / Magazine article
TARGET GROUP OF PUBLICATION
Young People
SIZE OF THE PUBLICATION
3 – 10 pages
DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
ENG:
This article draws attention to the difference between interest and relevance in science education while recognizing both can be considered components of intrinsic motivation – motivation for learning coming from students themselves.
Research has shown the importance of intrinsic motivation and this study seeks an approach to enhance this through taking examples from everyday life. The approach, citing PARSEL, a project promoting relevance and interest in science education for scientific literacy is to initial the learning through everyday language and to guide the students to recognize their lack of science conceptual learning for considering the everyday issue or concern being considered. The science learning is consolidated by a further stage which attempts to bring the science gained into the everyday issue being discussed.
One of the most common issues in science education is how to motivate students and increase interest towards science learning. Several international meetings and conferences held in the 21century have highlighted the need to develop science education in a way to make it more relevant for students (European Commission, 2004; IOSTE, 2004; ICASE, 2003).
Despite attempts to address these world-wide issues, science educators are still concerned about the decline of students’ interest and lack of relevance in science education and towards school science (Fensham, 2004; Holbrook, 2003, 2001; Sjøberg, 2002).It is thus appropriate to establish ways how relevance and interest can motivate students to learn science at school.
Motivation has been interpreted and defined in many ways. The main factor self or others to act. Generally, motivation is an internal state condition that activates or energizes behaviour (Huitt, 2001). Similarly, Brophy (2004) defines motivation as the internal state that arouses, directs and sustains human behaviour. Paris and Turner’s (1994) emphasized that motivation is highly personalized and there were four characteristics that influenced motivation: choice, challenge, control and collaboration Paris and Turner’s theory is helpful in explaining why students in science classrooms may be motivated to learn some topics and not others, or why students are motivated by some activities and not others. To gain a measure of motivation, Zusho & Pintrich (2003) considered that motivation could be discerned through students’ reports of their beliefs as well as through behaviours such as choice of activities, level and quality of task and engagement, persistence, and performance.
Keeping in mind the concepts of interest and motivation written above, the current study defines relevance as something what is valuable, meaningful and/or useful for student. This implies it is learning that occurs in the students’ frame of reference. It is situated learning. Situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1990; McLellan, 1995) occurs best if it is in a context and culture in which it normally occurs. Relevance is, therefore, a necessary condition for situated learning, although it needs to be recognised that additional considerations apply, particularly the need for learning to take place within an appropriate social context. This important consideration implies that not every scientific context or issue is, in itself, relevant. Relevance needs to be considered from the students’ point of view (Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2010).
FR :
Cet article attire l'attention sur la différence entre l'intérêt pour l'enseignement des sciences et la pertinence de celui-ci, tout en reconnaissant que les deux peuvent être considérés comme des éléments d’une motivation intrinsèque - la motivation à apprendre venant des étudiants eux-mêmes.
Des études ont montré l'importance de la motivation intrinsèque et la présente étude cherche une approche pour améliorer cet aspect en prenant des exemples de la vie quotidienne. L'approche, pour citer Parsel, un projet pour promouvoir la pertinence et l'intérêt pour l'enseignement des sciences et la culture scientifique, vise à initier l'apprentissage par le langage quotidien et à mener les étudiants à reconnaître leur manque d’apprentissage de concepts scientifiques pour examiner les questions quotidiennes à l'étude. L'apprentissage des sciences est consolidé par une étape supplémentaire qui tente de mettre la science acquise au cœur de la question quotidienne en cours de discussion.
L'un des problèmes les plus courants dans l'enseignement des sciences est de savoir comment motiver les élèves et accroître leur intérêt pour l'apprentissage des sciences. Plusieurs réunions et conférences internationales tenues au cours du 21e siècle ont mis en évidence la nécessité de développer l'enseignement des sciences de manière à le rendre plus pertinent pour les étudiants (Commission européenne, 2004; IOSTE, 2004; ICASE, 2003).
REVIEWER’S COMMENTS ON THE PUBLICATION
ENG:
Motivation, interest and relevance are the key-word of this article. A difference between interest and relevance in science education is given; they can be considered components of intrinsic motivation – motivation for learning coming from students themselves.
Research has shown the importance of intrinsic motivation and this study seeks an approach to enhance this through taking examples from everyday life. The approach is to initial the learning through everyday language and to guide the students to recognize their lack of science conceptual learning for considering the everyday issue or concern being considered.
One of the most common issues in science education is how to motivate students and increase interest towards science learning. Several international meetings and conferences held in the 21century have highlighted the need to develop science education in a way to make it more relevant for students.
Despite attempts to address these world-wide issues, science educators are still concerned about the decline of students’ interest and lack of relevance in science education and towards school science. So, it is appropriate to establish ways how relevance and interest can motivate students to learn science at school.
Motivation has been interpreted and defined in many ways. The main factor self or others to act. Generally, motivation is an internal state condition that activates or energizes behaviour, but it is also defined as the internal state that arouses, directs and sustains human behaviour.
This study defines relevance as something what is valuable, meaningful and/or useful for student. This implies it is learning that occurs in the students’ frame of reference. It is situated learning. Situated learning occurs best if it is in a context and culture in which it normally occurs. Relevance is, therefore, a necessary condition for situated learning. Not every scientific context or issue is, in itself, relevant. Relevance needs to be considered from the students’ point of view.
FR :
Malgré les tentatives de résoudre ces problèmes d’ampleur mondiale, les professeurs de sciences sont toujours préoccupés par le déclin de l'intérêt des élèves et le manque de pertinence dans l'enseignement des sciences et les sciences à l'école (Fensham, 2004; Holbrook, 2003, 2001; Sjöberg, 2002). Il convient donc de déterminer comment la pertinence et l'intérêt peuvent inciter les élèves à apprendre les sciences à l'école.
La motivation a été interprétée et définie de plusieurs façons. Le principal facteur de soi ou des autres à agir. En règle générale, la motivation est une condition interne qui active ou stimule le comportement (Huitt, 2001). De même, Brophy (2004) définit la motivation comme l'état interne qui suscite, dirige et soutient le comportement humain. Paris et Turner (1994) ont souligné que la motivation est très personnalisée et que quatre caractéristiques ont influé sur la motivation : le choix, le défi, le contrôle et la collaboration. La théorie de Paris et de Turner est utile pour expliquer pourquoi les étudiants de classes scientifiques peuvent être motivés à apprendre certains sujets plutôt que d'autres, ou pourquoi les étudiants ne sont motivés que par certaines activités. Pour obtenir une mesure de la motivation, Zusho & Pintrich (2003) ont considéré que la motivation pourrait être perçue par des rapports des élèves de leurs croyances ainsi que par des comportements tels que le choix des activités, le niveau et la qualité de la tâche et de l'engagement, la persévérance et la performance.
NAME OF THE REVIEWING ORGANISATION
INFOREF
Comments about this Publication
Your comments are welcome
Date: 2012.10.03
Posted by Giuseppina Caviglia (Italy)
Message: I think the article is interesting because it highlights the relationship between intrinsic motivation (interest of students) and relevance of the discipline from which achieve significant improvements in learning.
The paper explains the validity of educational projects in science (interdisciplinary as related to solving complex real-world problems) where student motivation is aroused from addressing real problems (which incorporate significant parts of the disciplinary knowledge) that cannot be solved using everyday language. This means that pupils are aware of the need to approach the study of chemistry (and other sciences) that become so important to the students themselves. The results obtained highlight the limits of traditional teaching, not motivating for students, only centered on epistemology of the discipline and organized taking into account only the teacher's point of view. The distance between the pupils and the discipline of the traditional teaching is cancelled by the informed participation in the project by the students who is conscious of the knowledge and skills that are being built. This requires that the real issues proposed to be organized in a way that shows clearly the correlation between the activity of study needed to find a solution to the problem and the skills that they are developing.
The little commitment to the study of chemistry and science in general is refers to the lack of interest in themselves are not considered important by students. To change this attitude must make important science in the eyes of the students, pointing out that scientific knowledge and skills needed to solve real problems. I agree in considering the lack of interest and correlation
between science and reality as obstacles for the construction of a structured knowledge, related to knowledge and personal skills of the pupils, as the lack of which causes only juxtaposition and bundling of knowledge are not used and are soon forgotten..
The article is presented in detail, for example, implemented only in a secondary school experience, but I transferred the design methods proposed. In my experience, even if carried out in primary school, I worked in a similar manner, complicating the reality of significant issues within the disciplinary depth and motivating for pupils with good results. These modes are influenced by the design expertise of the teacher-level specification and methodology so that it seems that teachers offering such projects should be able to get advice from the University and in particular those involved in chemistry education.
In the paper the emphasis is placed on the need for innovation in the teaching and highlights the difficulties that may have the teacher at that location, which tends to return to traditional teaching, centered on discipline and how the teacher organizes, rather than situated cognition and the development of intrinsic motivation of students. I found similar problems in managing projects of educational innovation in primary school and I witnessed personally how difficult it is to continue in the line without slipping shortcuts designed to reassure the teachers, and sometimes parents, but that compromise the results of research.
Date: 2012.09.09
Posted by Salta Katerina (Greece)
Message: This is a very interesting publication focusing on the difference between two components of intrinsic motivation: interest and relevance. Furthermore, a project (PARSEL) promoting relevance and interest in science education for scientific literacy is presented. The authors do a very nice work describing a theoretical framework of intrinsic motivation, particularly the Self-Determination Theory. Although the publication does not explain the causes for the students’ lack of relevance, interest, and any other motivational components to study Chemistry, several guidelines on how to conduct teaching in a way which would enhance motivation are cited.
According to the authors, relevance needs embedding instruction inside a student-developed need-to-know situation, and the PARSEL project strives towards promoting interest and relevance. A brief discussion of the PARSEL module approach with an example module entitled “Should Vegetable Oils be used as a Fuel?” is included. This project tries to address the question frequently expressed by students: Why are we studying this? To my opinion, this is a central issue to students’ motivation to learn Chemistry. Further research is needed in different contexts in order to reveal what is actually interesting for students to learn.
The publication also presents the module’s implementation experiences from nine Estonian teachers. From those experiences, it was found that teacher's acceptance was essential for using the module on a meaningful way. Some teachers modified the module to fit both their existing content knowledge and their teaching approaches resulting to failure of the module’s purpose for students’ motivation. From these findings, the need for the upgrading of pedagogical content knowledge for teachers is revealed.
Concluding, I think that this publication provides a very useful discussion on students’ intrinsic motivation to learn Chemistry.
