Finnish Students’ Engagement in Science Lessons

Linnansaari, Janna; Viljaranta, Jaana; Lavonen, Jari; Salmela‐Aro, Katariina

doi:10.5617/nordina.2047

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…According to the new government program in Finland, a national goal is to increase the number of highly educated people in the youth population to reach more than 50% (Finnish Government, 2019). Higher STEM identification may be associated with higher academic achievement (Seyranian et al, 2018), yet STEM subjects or fields such as ICT (Castaño & Webster 2011) are not attracting enough students, and the decreasing number of students in science learning has been recognized as a national problem (Linnansaari, Viljaranta, Lavonen, Schneider, & Salmela-Aro, 2015). Finland provides many career opportunities especially for people with STEM competencies.…”

Section: Case Finlandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Su, Rounds, and Armstrong (2009) studied vocational interests and suggest that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people. Indeed, to be engaged in studying STEM subjects, students need to have high levels of interest, skills, and desire for challenges (Wang & Degol, 2017, Linnansaari et al, 2015. Students' situational interest in science lessons is not as uniform as in other lessons, and Linnansaari et al (2015) suggest that girls tended to be interested in life science lessons and uninterested in physical science lessons, and in contrast, boys are highly interested in physical science topics but not life sciences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, to be engaged in studying STEM subjects, students need to have high levels of interest, skills, and desire for challenges (Wang & Degol, 2017, Linnansaari et al, 2015. Students' situational interest in science lessons is not as uniform as in other lessons, and Linnansaari et al (2015) suggest that girls tended to be interested in life science lessons and uninterested in physical science lessons, and in contrast, boys are highly interested in physical science topics but not life sciences. For example, in previous studies, physics was considered uninteresting because it was considered as difficult, irrelevant, and boring by some students, especially girls (Williams, Stanisstrect, Spall, Boyes, & Dickson, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Students’ reasons for STEM choices and the relationship of mathematics choice to university admission

et al. 2019

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Background: Despite the increasing need for STEM skills, to date, the connection between STEM subject choices and their impact on students' educational pathways has not been widely studied. Focusing on the mathematics choice (basic/advanced/no mathematics), a large register dataset that covered students admitted to Finnish universities during 2013-2015 (N = 46,281) was combined with upper-secondary school matriculation examination data (N = 93,955) to find out how this choice influenced the students' university admissions. This large dataset was also examined to establish the current gender distributions in different university degree programs from the perspective of mathematics choices. Further, to find out the students' reasons behind their mathematics choices, a cohort sample of 802 student responses was collected from upper-secondary schools. We also investigated the students' interests in different fields of study to establish any gender differences in them. Results: The register data analysis suggested that in Finland, students' mathematics choices had a strong influence on the university admission outcomes. For instance, only 33% of the upper-secondary school graduates took the advanced mathematics ME test in 2013-2015, yet the number of those admitted to universities who had taken the advanced mathematics ME test was 55%. Most of the university degree programs were female dominated, yet the university students with advanced mathematics were mostly male, and especially the STEM fields in the Finnish universities were male dominated. As for the reasons behind the mathematics choices, students who chose advanced mathematics believed in its usefulness for their future studies and careers. We also found significant gender-based educational differences regarding all the study fields, with STEM careers attracting more males than females. Conclusion: Advanced mathematics was highly valued in Finnish universities, and many students chose advanced mathematics believing in its usefulness for their future studies or careers. Yet, their further study interests and career plans were segregated by gender. As there is a rising need for STEM skills, we must seek effective ways to deliver the evolving possibilities of STEM fields to students, especially girls, during the earlier years of their educations.

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Section: Case Finlandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Students’ reasons for STEM choices and the relationship of mathematics choice to university admission

et al. 2019

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“…However, a high level of skill does not directly lead to situational engagement as the self-evaluation of skill is 8 SCIENCE CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES related to the difficulty or challenge of the task. Challenge, that the situation offers, can be seen as relatively positive state in which students' skills meet the demands of the task (Linnansaari et al, 2015). When the learning situation exceeds students' skills and the challenge is too demanding, students are likely to become disengaged.…”

Section: Student Situational Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science classroom activities and student situational engagement

Inkinen

Klager

Schneider

et al. 2018

International Journal of Science Education

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This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. Please cite the original version. SCIENCE CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES Word count: Abstract (209), Main text (5721), Tables (490) Science Classroom Activities and Student Situational EngagementInkinen Janna a AbstractThis study examines the association between student situational engagement and classroom activities in secondary school science classrooms in Finland and the U.S. Situational engagement is conceptualized as times when students feel that a task is interesting to them, challenging, and yet that they have the skills to complete it (see Schneider et al., 2016). Data on situational engagement and classroom activities were obtained using the experience sampling method (ESM) from 247 Finnish students in 12 secondary science classrooms and 281 U.S. students in 18 secondary science classrooms. In both samples, students tend to be situationally engaged only a small proportion of the time during their science classes.However, Finnish students were more likely than U.S. students to report being situationally engaged. To investigate when students were most likely to report being situationally engaged, hierarchical logistic regression models were employed, suggesting that some classroom activities are associated with higher levels of student situational engagement than others.Finnish students were more likely to report being situationally engaged when calculating and presenting scientific information. In the U.S., students were more likely to report being situationally engaged while discussing scientific information and less likely when listening to the teacher. Results suggest that situational engagement is momentary and associated with specific science classroom activities.

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“…Researchers in the fields of education and psychology have extensively studied interest, engagement and motivation [17] [18] [19]. According to [20], students' attitude and motivation towards, and interest in school science along with their beliefs as learners can positively influence the quality and quantity of learning outcomes, and are vital to their engagement in science learning [21]. Studies have highlighted the importance of student engagement by revealing its influence on student performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precursors of Student Engagement in Indian Milieu

Singh¹,

Ningthoujam²

2020

TEL

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The topic of student engagement has captured much research attention lately. However, there still remains a paucity of empirical work on the construct in Indian context. Therefore, the current investigation seeks to identify the precursors or antecedents of student engagement in Indian institutes. Sample of the current study comprised of 717 respondents from University students. Results indicate that Student engagement is a function of certain situational factors such as academic facilities, faculty, role of administration as well as some personality factors viz. locus of control and self-efficacy.

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Finnish Students’ Engagement in Science Lessons

Cited by 9 publications

References 51 publications

Students’ reasons for STEM choices and the relationship of mathematics choice to university admission

Students’ reasons for STEM choices and the relationship of mathematics choice to university admission

Science classroom activities and student situational engagement

Precursors of Student Engagement in Indian Milieu

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