Topic 1: Attracting Girls Into Physics
AIP conference proceedings · 2002
Abstract
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Bridging culture and science: Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach in culturally relevant biology pedagogy
As science educators seek innovative methods to engage students, the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA) has emerged as a promising strategy, particularly for African students. CTCA is a culturally responsive teaching method that integrates culture, technology, and locational context, making science more relatable and meaningful. We assessed CTCA’s effectiveness in enhancing critical thinking in biology among 121 senior secondary students in Lagos State. An explanatory sequential design was used, with the experimental group taught using CTCA and the control group receiving traditional instruction. Data were collected using the Critical Thinking Test in Nutrition (a = 0.80) and interviews. Results showed a significant improvement in critical thinking for the CTCA group (F(1, 198) = 11.43; p < 0.05), with no significant gender differences (F(1,49) = .49; p > .05). Students responded positively to intervention, leading to the conclusion that CTCA effectively enhances critical thinking in biology; hence, adoption of CTCA in biology instruction is recommended.
Connecting high school physics experiences, outcome expectations, physics identity, and physics career choice: A gender study
Abstract This study explores how students' physics identities are shaped by their experiences in high school physics classes and by their career outcome expectations. The theoretical framework focuses on physics identity and includes the dimensions of student performance, competence, recognition by others, and interest. Drawing data from the Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE) project, which surveyed college English students nationally about their backgrounds, high school science experiences, and science attitudes, the study uses multiple regression to examine the responses of 3,829 students from 34 randomly selected US colleges/universities. Confirming the salience of the identity dimension for young persons' occupational plans, the measure for students' physics identity used in this study was found to strongly predict their intended choice of a physics career. Physics identity, in turn, was found to correlate positively with a desire for an intrinsically fulfilling career and negatively with a desire for personal/family time and opportunities to work with others. Physics identity was also positively predicted by several high school physics characteristics/experiences such as a focus on conceptual understanding, real‐world/contextual connections, students answering questions or making comments, students teaching classmates, and having an encouraging teacher. Even though equally beneficial for both genders, females reported experiencing a conceptual focus and real‐world/contextual connections less frequently. The explicit discussion of under‐representation of women in science was positively related to physics identity for female students but had no impact for male students. Surprisingly, several experiences that were hypothesized to be important for females' physics identity were found to be non‐significant including having female scientist guest speakers, discussion of women scientists' work, and the frequency of group work. This study exemplifies a useful theoretical framework based on identity, which can be employed to further examine persistence in science, and illustrates possible avenues for change in high school physics teaching. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 978–1003, 2010
Effects of discovery and expository instructional methods on the attitude of students to biology
Abstract The effects of discovery and expository instructional methods on the attitude of students to biology was investigated. The sample consisted of 240 Form IV biology students randomly drawn from six selected secondary schools in the Oyo state of Nigeria. They were assigned into two groups—experimental and control. The experimental group was exposed to the discovery method, and the control group was taught using the expository method. The science class of Form IV in each of the six schools was selected intact for the study. A nonrandomized pretest‐posttest control group design was employed. The major instrument was the 40–item Scientific Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ). It is a Likert‐type questionnaire using five scales. Two hypotheses were tested. Analyses of the results showed that the experimental group evinced a significantly more favorable attitude to biology than the control group (t = 8.87, p < 0.01). It was also found that the high, average‐, and low‐ability groups in the experimental class evinced a more favorable attitude to biology than their counterparts in the control class. However, there was no significant difference in the attitude of male and female students exposed to the discovery and expository methods (F1,227 = 0.07, p > 0.999). The article concludes with a recommendation that science learning using the discovery method may enable the learner to evince more a favorable attitude toward problem recognition and problem solving than when learning is done by the expository method.