Session Information
Contribution
Learning is more effective, if the subject of learning is presented in contexts, which are perceived as relevant by the learners. What sort of science themes are the students interested in? How do teachers estimate the interests of the students? There are two key factors influencing the potential of science education to motivate and inspire the students: what content is taught and in which context it is taught. Several empirical studies verify this connection of content and context as key factors for the interest in the natural sciences. In the SAS study [Science and Scientists; Sjøberg 2000] Svein Sjøberg describes the attraction of subject contents in such a way that they depends on the context being offered. For example, "music" is more interesting for young people than "acoustics and sounds" and "rainbows and sunsets" are more interesting than "light and optics". Additionally, the interest study, which was carried out nationwide by the IPN over ten years ago showed that the context was more influential than the content in generating students´interests in physics. With this in mind the author participated in the international project ROSE (The Relevance of science Education; Schreiner & Sjöberg 2004). This is an international comparative study on the factors which influence learning in science. More than 40 nations are participating worlwide aimed at examining influence factors of science and technology learning. The surveys in Germany and Austria were carried out in 26 schools of different types between October 2004 and June 2006. 621 students from Austria and 626 from Germany between the ages of 14-16 participated in ROSE. The samples consisted of 53,7% girls and 46,3%. The students answered the questions (108 items) by inserting crosses in a four-scale rating scale with both the extreme categories "not interested" and "very interested". The analysis presented in this study took place using factor analysis (analysis of main components with varimax-rotation).Additionally, using the items of the ROSE questionnaire 45 teachers were asked about their estimation of the interest of the students in science themes. The juxtaposition of the findings of the students´survey and the teachers´survey allowed findings for future science curricula. The interest spectrum of students in Austria and Germany demonstrate a lot of similarities. Adolescents from both counties are interested in the universe, human biology and zoology. Botany as well as the subjects geology, technology and energy are not interest priorities for adolescents. If you compare interest according to gender, then the interest of girls in contents of human biology as well as the interest of boys in contents which focus on electricity, energy, technology and chemistry is bought clearly to light. Adolescents in Austria and Germany are mainly interested in contexts, which have to do directly with their body and their own personal development ("young body context") as well as the contexts health, spectacular phenomena and mysticism and wonder. They are less interested in the contexts beauty and aesthetics and subjects in the context of everyday usage. When comparing the genders it is noticeable that girls focus on the contexts health, fitness, "young body" as well as mysticism and wonder. Boys, in contrast, are more interested in the spectacular and horror contexts.In summary, it can be established that today's adolescents, in contrast to their peers of a decade ago, are more interested in health, fitness, mysticism and the spectacular events. Moreover, a strong affinity to contexts with a special relation to adolescent problems (sex and reproduction, AIDS, drugs…) is equally interesting for both genders. The juxtaposition of the students´interests and the estimation of the teachers about the students´interest showed significant differences. The findings and conclusions for a more context-based science curriculum will be presented. Hoffmann L, Häußler P, Lehrke M (1998) Die IPN-Interessensstudie Physik. IPN 158. Kiel: IPN Schreiner C and Sjøberg S (2004) The Relevance of Science Education. Sowing the Seed of ROSE. Oslo: Acta Didactica. Sjøberg S (2000) The SAS-Study. Cross-cultural evidence and perspectives on pupils´ interests, experiences and perceptions. [http://folk.uio.no/sveinsj/SASweb.htm ] of science education
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.