Effects of a science center outreach lab on school students' achievement – Are student lab visits needed when they teach what students can learn at school?

Emotional and motivational outcomes of lab work in the secondary intermediate track: The contribution of a science center outreach lab

“…The present study overcomes these limitations by exploring predictors of activity emotions and motivational outcomes of in‐ and out‐of‐school lab work for ninth‐graders and extends research in this area using data from an extensive project on the effectiveness of lab‐work environments (Itzek‐Greulich et al, , ). This project aimed at disentangling effects of lab work (vs. no lab work), school (vs. out‐of‐school), practical lesson (vs. theoretical lesson), classroom disturbances, and student personality when four distinct groups ( School only , SCOL & school , SCOL only , and a control group) are compared.…”

“…This project aimed at disentangling effects of lab work (vs. no lab work), school (vs. out‐of‐school), practical lesson (vs. theoretical lesson), classroom disturbances, and student personality when four distinct groups ( School only , SCOL & school , SCOL only , and a control group) are compared. Previous analyses have shown that the three lab‐work conditions were effective at increasing achievement, irrespective of whether the students visited the SCOL or not (Itzek‐Greulich et al, ). Moreover, further research showed that the three lab‐work conditions were effective in increasing state motivation (Itzek‐Greulich et al, ).…”

“…The data were collected in 50 classes from 22 secondary schools (intermediate track Realschule ) in the German state of Baden‐Württemberg between November 2012 and July 2013 (Itzek‐Greulich et al, , ). Covariates were assessed in all four groups 1 week prior to the intervention at school in the students’ regular classrooms in the presence of both a researcher and a teacher.…”

“…However, the majority of studies that have analyzed the effects of SCOL visits (Hausamann, ; Thomas, ) and related learning settings (Rennie, ; Sasson, ; Sasson & Cohen, ) on students’ learning performance and motivation have had some limitations. Previous studies have relied on small sample sizes ( N < 400) with the exception of Sasson and Cohen () as well as Seybold, Braunbeck, and Randler () and several did not use a randomized design implemented in a multilevel context, with the exception of, for example, Itzek‐Greulich et al (). Some of these studies were qualitative (Dohn, ; Jarvis & Pell, ; Luehmann, ) and did not include a control group (Sasson & Cohen, ).…”

“…The designs of most previous studies in terms of sample sizes, characteristics of the control groups, lack of randomization, and statistical analyses limited their ability to detect causal effects due to SCOL visits. To overcome some of these limitations, the study from which we took the data (Itzek‐Greulich et al, , ) compared achievement and motivational outcomes of a guided SCOL visit in a randomized field trial with a pretest‐posttest design. More specifically, Itzek‐Greulich et al () (i) randomly assigned a large number of classes (50 classes of ninth‐grade students) to one of three lab‐work conditions ( SCOL only , SCOL & school , and School only ) and a control group; (ii) implemented a design with similar timing and concise contents: 8 hours of learning about the “chemistry of starch”, divided into a theoretical part and a practical part; and (iii) used item response theory to correct the nonlinearity of rating scales and multilevel analyses to address the clustering of the data.…”