The purpose of this study was to investigate how learning materials based on Science Magic activities affect student attitudes to science. A quasi-experimental design was conducted to explore the combination of Science Magic with the 5E Instructional Model to develop learning materials for teaching a science unit about friction. The participants were recruited from among the students of a middle school in central Taiwan. Based on our results, we conclude that our combined teaching method involving Science Magic activities and the 5E Instructional Model is effective for developing learning materials for teaching, and that this method improves students' attitudes toward science.
This research used a quasi-experimental method to explore whether integrating Science Magic (SM) into 5E Learning Cycle (5ELC) in the development of teaching materials for a friction unit would impact students’ learning outcomes and attitudes toward science. A total of 68 eighth-grade students were divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was taught using teaching materials and methods developed using the SM-based 5ELC, while the control group adhered solely to textbook-based materials, which were also based on the 5ELC but did not involve SM activities. Two major findings were obtained in this research. First, learning effects for the experimental group were significantly higher than the control group, especially in relation to characteristics of static friction, factors that affect friction, and relationships between frictional and normal force. Second, the experimental group showed significant improvements in their attitudes toward science when juxtaposed with the control group.
Keywords: attitudes toward science, friction concepts, inquiry-based teaching strategy, science magic.
This research explores how scaffolding students’ reflections on scientific modeling criteria influence the students’ views on scientific models, development of explanatory models, and understanding of scientific models. This research recruited treatment groups and comparison groups in middle schools and high schools. The treatment groups adopted a modeling curriculum that was intended to help students engage in scientific modeling by developing scientific models of magnetism while considering scientific modeling criteria. The comparison groups used the traditional curriculum, which offers students scientific models of magnetism. The results show that the modeling curriculum enhanced the students’ views on scientific models and the students’ ability to develop explanatory models of magnetism and modeling criteria. Thus, the findings indicate that the modeling curriculum might serve as a promising tool to facilitate teaching scientific modeling to middle school and high school students, and that the curriculum should be promoted as early as middle school.
Keywords: scientific modeling, modeling curriculum, nature of models and modeling, model development, model evaluation, magnetism concepts.
The main purpose of this study was to bridge the gap between how scientists practice and how students learn science. To achieve this, an innovative student-centered curriculum was designed to teach 42 undergraduate students. The program involved scaffolding activities, an interactive computer simulation, and reflection on scientific modeling criteria to address the students’ difficulties in reasoning at the microscopic level and the scientific evaluation of their models during their development of an explanatory model of magnetism. To address the students’ difficulties in reasoning at the microscopic level and the scientific evaluation of their models during their development of an explanatory model of magnetism, the program involved scaffolding activities, an interactive computer simulation, and reflection on scientific modeling criteria. The results of the study indicated that more than half the students developed scientific and coherent microscopic N-S dipole models to explain observed magnetic phenomena, and students’ understanding of the nature of models was significantly enhanced after the instruction. This study contributes to modeling theory and the methods that can help students self-develop scientific models of magnetism as opposed to rote learning.
Key words: explanatory models, magnetism, modeling, scientific inquiry, undergraduate students.
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