Unveiling Potential: Fostering Students’ Self-Concepts in Science Education by Designing Inclusive Educational Settings

Abstract

The relevance of experimentation in natural sciences and the importance of inclusion of all students are widely acknowledged. Successful scientific experimentation in the classroom is based on higher levels of science self-concept and appropriate instructions for completing the experiment. To facilitate the experimentation process, we developed a learning environment for magnetism with minimal barriers, aimed at fostering experimentation and self-concept development in dimensions such as language, visibility, and action. In a study involving 348 students from Grades 5 and 6 from German secondary schools, we investigated how students perceived the learning environment in terms of accessibility, how their self-concept in engaging with experimental instructions developed, and how these two concepts, accessibility and self-concept, are related. The results indicated that the students found the instructions of the digital learning environment to be accessible and showed a significant increase in self-concept when utilizing experimental instructions. It was also shown that the more accessible the students perceived the experimental instructions, the greater the increase in their self-concept with experimental instructions. However, only a small amount of variance was explained. This shows that such a digital learning environment can have positive effects on students, although the remaining open aspects (e.g., the specific support of low-achieving students) are being addressed and should be investigated in the future.