What students learn from hands‐on activities

Abstract

The ability to design and interpret controlled experiments is an important scientific process skill and a common objective of science standards. Numerous intervention studies have investigated how the control-of-variables-strategy (CVS) can be introduced to students. However, a meta-analysis of 72 intervention studies found that the opportunity to train CVS skills with hands-on tasks (g ¼ 0.59) did not lead to better acquisition of CVS relative to interventions without a hands-on component (g ¼ 0.74). We conducted an intervention study in which we investigated the differential effects of hands-on and paper-and-pencil training tasks on 161 eighth-grade students' achievement. CVS was demonstrated to all students before they were grouped into a hands-on or a paper-and-pencil training condition. In both training conditions, students designed and interpreted experiments about which variables influence the force of electromagnets. Students in the hands-on group interacted with physical equipment while students in the paper-and-pencil group planned experiments using sketches and interpreted the outcome of experiments presented in photographs. We found no general advantage or disadvantage of hands-on tasks, as both groups did equally well on CVS and content knowledge tests. However, hands-on students outperformed paper-and-pencil students on a hands-on test identical to the training tasks, whereas the paper-and-pencil students outperformed hands-on students on a science fair poster evaluation task similar to the paper-and-pencil training. In summary, students learned task-specific procedural knowledge, but they did not acquire a deeper conceptual understanding of CVS or the content domain as a function of type of training. Implications for instruction and assessment are discussed. # The ability to design and interpret controlled experiments is an important scientific process skill and a common curricular objective of science standards (National Research Council, 2012; NGSS Lead States, 2013). Accordingly, numerous intervention studies have investigated how students can be taught to design and interpret controlled experiments. Many of these studies utilize hands-on tasks to train students' experimentation skills because it has been assumed that students should benefit from hands-on experiences, as they offer authentic and direct practice with designing and interpreting controlled experiments. However, the results of a recent meta-analysis of 72 intervention studies challenge this assumption (Schwichow, Croker, Zimmerman, H€ offler, Correspondence to: M. Schwichow;

Exploring Students’ Acquisition of Manipulative Skills during Science Practical Work

“…through inquiry and discovery and encourages students to learn through the discovery of phenomena that occur in the environment. Such a learning strategy might facilitates the acquisition of scientific knowledge and the understanding of scientific theories (Fadzil & Saat, 2013;Schwichow, Zimmerman, Croker & Härtig, 2016).…”

“…Hasni and Potvin, 2015;McFarlane, 2013;Schwichow, Zimmerman, Croker & Härtig, 2016) have shown that secondary school students prefer teaching methods in which they can play an active role in "doing" science such as collecting scientific data through observation and experimentation. According to McFarlane (2013), in order to enhance students' interest in learning science subjects, there is a need for a more involved and activity-based practical approach that provides students with opportunities to engage with science, as science subject has long been taught and learned as a mono-methodological branch of knowledge (McFarlane, 2013).…”

“…The skill to conduct hands-on practical work in science laboratory is an important scientific process skill and a common intention of science standards (Schwichow, Zimmerman, Croker & Härtig, 2016). Abrahams and Millar (2008) and Abrahams, Reiss, and Sharpe (2013) define the term 'practical work' as any type of teaching and learning that involve manipulating and observing real objects.…”

Does Hands-on Science Practices Make an Impact on Achievement in Science? A Meta-Analysis

“…On the other hand, results from a recent meta-analysis on control-ofvariables strategy (CVS) revealed that the utilizing of the CVS had not significantly different compared to studies that did not use hands-on training (Schwichow, Croker, Zimmerman, Höffler, & Härtig, 2015). In an intervention research conducted by the same research team (Schwichow, Zimmerman, Croker, & Härtig (2016), it was found that hands-on tasks did not differ significantly eight grade students" achievement compared to paper-and-pencil training tasks.…”

Developing Scientific Thinking Through Inquiry Learning

“…The other researchers [23]- [25] have implemented the direct instruction to teach students inquiry skills. In this approach, the goals, material, examples, explanation, as well as the speed of learning, all are controlled by teacher or instructor.…”