Engagement with Science Across the Middle Years in New Zealand
- PDF / 639,494 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 59 Downloads / 236 Views
Engagement with Science Across the Middle Years in New Zealand Kaitlyn M. Martin1 · Lloyd S. Davis1 · Susan Sandretto2 Received: 11 June 2020 / Accepted: 8 November 2020 © New Zealand Association for Research in Education 2020
Abstract International and national studies have revealed a sharp decline in student science engagement during the middle years of schooling. In Aotearoa New Zealand, over 20 years of cross-sectional evidence has repeatedly shown high levels of student engagement with science in primary school and lower levels in high school, but very little evidence in-between. In this study, we conducted an engagement survey (n = 429) across Years 7–10 (11–15 yo) to better understand this gap. We found that decreasing engagement with science was only apparent when considering school science, but not in other contexts like choosing science careers or science outside of school. Contrary to common rhetoric of a ‘decline’ in student engagement with science, we suggest that the middle years are marked with uncertainty about the role of science in students’ lives, which would benefit from a shift toward contextualised curricula. Keywords Science education · Science engagement · Engagement with science · Middle years education
Introduction Declining science interest and participation has become a concerning issue internationally (Potvin and Hasni 2014) and in New Zealand (Gluckman 2011). The middle years between primary to secondary school science is a key time in the formation of attitudes toward science, with research suggesting most attitudes are established by fourteen years of age (Tytler and Osborne 2012). While constructs such as motivation, interest, and attitudes have been utilised interchangeably in the literature relating to the intent to act, student engagement is the action which can be focused on
* Kaitlyn M. Martin [email protected] 1
Centre for Science Communication, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
2
College of Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies
through students’ participation in science in and out of school, in their everyday lives, and in their future (Christenson et al. 2012). International research highlights multiple potential influences on student engagement with science, with Gardner (1975) organising these into two distinct groupings; internal (gender, personality, cognitive variables) and external (student background, school environment, curriculum, or instruction). These variables are widely validated in the literature (Osborne et al. 2003). Large-scale academic assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2008) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (Martin et al. 2016) are now typically supplemented with science engagement questions to report on international trends in engagement with science, though they are often conceptualised in different terms
Data Loading...
