Session Information
11 ONLINE 53 A, Creating learning community
Paper Session
MeetingID: 992 8767 7736 Code: xe1SWF
Contribution
The promotion of mathematical and scientific knowledge is an essential task to solve current and future problems of our society. Outreach initiatives like out-of-school laboratories or science centers may play an important role in fulfilling this task as they aim at fostering students’ interest in STEM areas. These innovative settings offer opportunities to discover scientific and technical fields of activities and professions (Gumaelius et al., 2016).
This paper presents the results of a study conducted in such a setting, a special offer for students called CAMMP (Computational and Mathematical Modeling Program). The (online) CAMMP day, a component of CAMMP, is an extracurricular offer by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), tailored for middle and high school students. The aim of this program is to show students the social importance of mathematics and simulation science by means of real problems from everyday life, industry or research (Schönbrodt et al., 2022). Therefore, the students in the workshop deal with corresponding problem solutions through mathematical modeling and computer use.
To evaluate the effectiveness of this outreach initiative, we developed a questionnaire and conducted a survey among the participating students focusing on their interest experience during the activities. From a compilation of various nations around the world (Freeman et al., 2015), it becomes clear that worldwide the attitudes and the interest of students are considered important factors regarding STEM education. Consequently, interest can be considered a critical factor in evaluating such learning opportunities and the achieved educational success. For our research, we incorporated different theories of interest. The person-object theory of interest (Krapp, 2002), Hidi and Renninger's Four-Phase Model of interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006) as well as the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (1985) are considered.
We stated the following research questions:
(RQ1) What are the component values of the participants' situational interest after participating in the informal out-of-school computational and mathematical modeling program CAMMP?
(RQ2) Are there differences in the level of interest depending on certain characteristics of the students such as age, gender or type of school?
Method
For this study, we developed a questionnaire based on previous research on interest in out-of-school learning environments (e.g Engeln, 2004). This was preceded by a systematic literature review on informal out-of-school learning environments and their effects on student interest (Neher-Asylbekov & Wagner, 2021). The developed questionnaire allows us to investigate students’ interest experience in detail, as we included various aspects of situational interest. To account for the multidimensionality of interest, based on the person-object theory of interest (Krapp, 2002), we included the feeling-related, value-related, and epistemic component of interest. In addition, the basic needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness according to the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (1985) were considered. More than 80 K-12 students aged from 13 to 18 years participated in this survey that took place directly after the online CAMMP day. The data were evaluated with SPSS.
Expected Outcomes
We expect the following findings of our research questions: (RQ1) We expect the students to show high values for the different components of situational interest as many studies show the potential of out-of-school learning environments to promote student situational interest (e.g. Beranek-Knauer et al., 2020; Itzek-Greulich et al., 2017). It remains to be seen how the participants will react to this innovative content focus, which they are not accustomed to from school lessons. (RQ2) We expect the students’ age to influence their measured situational interest, because Ozogul et al. (2019) have shown that students’ interest experience in out-of-school learning environments may correlate with age. We don´t expect gender to influence students’ situational interest as former studies have shown that female students often show similar levels of situational interest in (mathematic) out-of-school learning environments as male students (e.g. Vainikainen et al., 2015). Many studies suggest that there is no correlation of interest experience with prior knowledge (e.g. Salmi & Thuneberg, 2019; Vainikainen et al., 2015). Even though other factors apart from prior knowledge may be linked to the type of school, we assume that students type of school does not have a significant impact on student interest. As there seems to be a growing number of out-of-school learning environments it is important to analyze their effects. During the pandemic many providers of these learning opportunities created online offerings for which little research has been done so far. Our results may help informal learning environments worldwide to improve their educational programs by focusing on promoting different components of interest.
References
Beranek-Knauer, H., Walter, H., Paleczek, D., Eder, L., Jungwirth, K., & Jungwirth, H. (2020). Discourse-directed framing as communication strategy alters students’ concept of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance formation. International Journal of Science Education, Part B: Communication and Public Engagement, 10(4), 319–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2020.1844921 Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press. Engeln, K. (2004). Schülerlabors: authentische, aktivierende Lernumgebungen als Möglichkeit, Interesse an Naturwissenschaften und Technik zu wecken [Student laboratories: authentic, activating learning environments as a way to spark interest in science and technology]. Logos-Verlag. Freeman, B., Marginson, S., & Tytler, R. (Eds.). (2015). The age of STEM: Educational policy and practice across the world in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Routledge. Gumaelius, L., Almqvist, M., Árnadóttir, A., Axelsson, A., Conejero, J. A., García-Sabater, J. P., Klitgaard, L., Kozma, C., Maheut, J., Marin-Garcia, J., Mickos, H., Nilsson, P.-O., Norén, A., Pinho-Lopes, M., Prenzel, M., Ray, J., Roxå, T., & Voss, M. (2016). Outreach initiatives operated by universities for increasing interest in science and technology. European Journal of Engineering Education, 41(6), 589–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2015.1121468 Hidi, S., & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111–127. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_4 Itzek-Greulich, H., Flunger, B., Vollmer, C., Nagengast, B., Rehm, M., & Trautwein, U. (2017). Effectiveness of lab-work learning environments in and out of school: A cluster randomized study. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 48, 98–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2016.09.005 Krapp, A. (2002). Structural and dynamic aspects of interest development: theoretical considerations from an ontogenetic perspective. Learning and Instruction, 12(4), 383–409. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-4752(01)00011-1 Neher-Asylbekov, S., & Wagner, I. (2021). Informal out-of-school learning environments and their effects on student interest. https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/26/contribution/50538/ Ozogul, G., Miller, C. F., & Reisslein, M. (2019). School fieldtrip to engineering workshop: pre-, post-, and delayed-post effects on student perceptions by age, gender, and ethnicity. European Journal of Engineering Education, 44(5), 745–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2018.1518408 Salmi, H., & Thuneberg, H. (2019). The role of self-determination in informal and formal science learning contexts. Learning Environments Research, 22(1), 43–63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-018-9266-0 Schönbrodt, S., Wohak, K., & Frank, M. (2022). Digital tools to enable collaborative mathematical modeling online. Modelling in Science Education and Learning, 15(1), 151-174. https://doi.org/10.4995/msel.2022.16269 Vainikainen, M.-P., Salmi, H., & Thuneberg, H. (2015). Situational interest and learning in a science center mathematics exhibition. Journal of Research in STEM Education, 1(1), 15–29. https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/233063/2_Vainikainen.pdf?sequence=1
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