Constructivist Teaching Methods, Student Attitudes, and Scientific Habits of Mind: An Investigation of Relationships
University Collaborators
Pam Castori, California Science Project of Sacramento, CRESS Center, UC Davis;
Wendell Potter, Professor, Department of Physics, UC Davis
K-12 Collaborators
Arthur C. Beauchamp, Will C. Wood High, Vacaville Unified;
Lory E. Heron, Procter R. Hug High, Reno, Nevada
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Funding
1996-97: $15,000 CRESS Grant
The Vacaville Unified School District, the Scope, Sequence & Coordination Program, and the California Science Project-Sacramento contributed additional funding.
School Collaboration
1 high school teacher and 2 science classes from 1 school in Vacaville, and from 1 school in Reno, Nevada
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Project Description
In this research, collaborators looked at the relationship between the use of teaching strategies consistent with the Constructivist Learning Model (CLM) in secondary science classrooms and the attitudes of students toward science. The use of teaching strategies consistent with the Constructivist Learning Model, it was predicted, would result in a significant increase in positive student attitudes toward science, generally. Alternatively, it was supposed that students who were exposed to more traditional teaching strategies would not show a similar increase in their positive attitudes toward science.
Instead of an emphasis on the rote learning by each individual student, CLM promotes group learning and the use of student thinking, experiences, and interests to drive science lessons. Students explore issues, propose explanations and solutions, and take action to test their hypotheses. Instead of being passive receptacles of knowledge, then, students collaborate with their teachers, and with each other, to see why their paths toward solutions to problems--and toward knowledge--seem promising to them. (Yager, 1991).
The first year of this research project was supported by a 1995-96 CRESS Planning Grant, "Development and Use of a Science Attitudes Assessment Tool," during which a science attitudes instrument was developed, the research design was refined, and procedures to identify participants and subjects were successfully completed. This larger study, supported by the 1996-97 CRESS Grant, was completed during the second year.
The design for this experimental investigation was a 'pre-test, post-test,' 'control group-experimental group' design. All teacher participants and student subjects were volunteers. The study was conducted at two comprehensive urban high schools with similar demographics, one in Vacaville, California and the other in Reno, Nevada.
Six experimental-group teachers and four control-group teachers were involved. Each teacher was observed in the classroom an average of six times using the Science Observation Guide to measure the frequency of each teacher's observed constructivist behaviors. The mean frequency of constructivist consistent teaching behaviors for the control-group teachers was 12.89; the mean for the experimental-group teachers was 20.67. Teaching behaviors, therefore, differed significantly between the two groups (F(1,8) - 16.2, p=.004), with the experimental-group teachers demonstrating almost twice the number of constructivist behaviors as the control group teachers.
All of the students in the classrooms of the participating teachers were tested at the outset of the study to evaluate their attitudes toward science. Then, after the experimental group received instruction based on the teaching strategies consistent with the CLM for a four month period, both experimental and control group students were re-tested.
The null hypothesis for this study stated that no change would take place between control and experimental groups in their attitudes toward science as a result of the experimental group's exposure to CLM teaching strategies. After the data were analyzed, this null hypothesis was rejected (F(1,247) = 8.04, p<.005). A Levene Test for Homogeneity of Variances was run, establishing initial group equivalence (p = 0.922, two-tail). Then, the corresponding hypothesis, positing that a significant positive change would take place in student attitudes toward science for subjects from the experimental group, was affirmed.
Additionally, an analysis was done of positive attitude toward science based on gender. An initial significant difference in positive attitude toward science between females and males in the experimental group was found (p = .05). At the end of the study period there was no significant difference in positive attitude toward science between those same females and males. One of the most far-reaching findings of the study, however, was that although the attitudes toward science of both males and females in the experimental group increased (+ .428 and + 2.04 respectively), it was the female population that showed the most substantial change. And this change in the attitude toward science of females in the experimental group was statistically significant, as revealed by the paired t-test (p = .05). Clearly, if constructivist methods affect the attitudes of high school females to this extent, this is an important result.
The data further showed a downward trend in attitudes toward science in the control group subjects, although taken by itself this shift was not statistically significant. (Interestingly, both control and experimental groups showed similar downward--less positive--trends in their attitudes toward school during the study period.)
A comparison of differences in attitude changes toward science by gender within the control group in the study showed no significant differences. Both males and females in the control group exhibited a negative change in their attitudes toward science. However, both males and females in the experimental group showed a positive change in their attitudes toward science.
Finally, at the onset of the study there were no significant differences in student attitudes toward science based on the year of schooling--grades 9 through 12--and this still held true at the conclusion of the study. And no significant differences were found between the changes in student attitude toward science and student achievement in science (based on the students' self-reported last grades in science). However, it should be noted that, while student-reported grades dropped in both study groups, the experimental group still exhibited increases in positive attitudes toward science, while the control group did not.
Since the early 80's the Constructivist Learning Model has been recognized as an effective and useful description of how students learn. Also, certain teaching strategies lend themselves to the practices which support this learning model. Many teachers are aware of the influence of student attitude on the outcome of instruction; this study was an attempt to explore the relationship between one particular teaching strategy and student attitudes. Based on the findings reviewed above, the study confirms that teaching strategies consistent with the CLM produce dividends for all students in terms of their attitudes toward science, and, therefore, in their abilities to think about, organize, and investigate the world around them as scientists do.