Why are we learning this? Using mixed methods to understand teachers’ relevance statements and how they shape middle school students’ perceptions of science utility

Schmidt, Jennifer; Kafkas, Stephen S.; Maier, Kimberly S.; Shumow, Lee; Kackar-Cam, Hayal Z.

doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2018.08.005

Cited by 40 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Relevance refers to the degree to which one perceives an activity as having meaning, importance, or utility beyond the immediate learning context. In traditional school environments, when students perceive their teachers as emphasizing relevance in their instruction, students report having more positive attitudes toward school and are more engaged (Assor, Kaplan, & Roth, 2002;Schmidt, Kafkas, Maier, Shumow, & Kackar-Cam, 2019). Koballa Jr. and Glynn (2007) provide evidence that seeing science and related STEM content as relevant is a strong indicator of whether youth will become engaged and persist in science.…”

Section: Relevancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some have suggested that boys and girls hold different perceptions about how useful science can be to them (Catsambis, 1995;James, 2002;Lee & Berkham, 1996). Schmidt et al (2019) found that in traditional science classrooms when teachers more strongly emphasize content relevance, girls rate the content as more useful, whereas boys do not. This suggests that male and female students may process information they consider about relevance differently.…”

Section: The Role Of Youth Characteristics: Perceived Competence Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experiences, activities, and personal characteristics as predictors of engagement in STEM‐focused summer programs

et al. 2020

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Out‐of‐school‐time programs for youth that are focused on STEM content are often seen as affording opportunities to increase youth engagement, interest, and knowledge in STEM domains, yet we know relatively little about how youth actually experience such programs. In this article, we explore how experiences and activities employed in the delivery of summer STEM programs are associated with youth engagement during programming, and whether youth characteristics moderate these relationships. Data were collected from 203 youth (ages 10–16) in nine summer programs using multiple methods including video, experience sampling, and surveys. Through the use of cross‐classified, multi‐level models, we found that youth reported higher engagement in program activities they perceived to be more challenging and relevant, and in activities, they perceived to have more affordances for learning or developing skills. Gender moderated these relationships such that the positive relationships observed among males were muted or nonexistent for girls. We further identify that program activities are differently associated with fostering challenge, relevance, and learning. Findings have implications for out‐of‐school STEM programming for youth.

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Section: Relevancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Role Of Youth Characteristics: Perceived Competence Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiences, activities, and personal characteristics as predictors of engagement in STEM‐focused summer programs

et al. 2020

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“…Perception formed will influence student interest in learning [4] , also affect learning motivation [5] and confidence in self [6] . A student's perception is also influenced by age [7] and gender [8] .…”

Section: Student"s Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student psychological responses to english for biology course in biology department of universitas negeri padang

Lufri

Yogica

2020

Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Science and Technology - ICESTech 2020

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Education at the university expects graduates who are able to integrate with social life, including with international life. Students who graduate become a benchmark for the quality of the place they study. So, the quality of a university depends on the quality of the individual graduates. The quality of graduates is marked by their achievement index at the end of each semester. Students who have high intelligence have the possibility of getting high scores, and vice versa. The "English for Biology" course is an effort to harmonize the world's needs of qualified graduates with the role of the university's function as a place to prepare it. In each lecture will appear a variety of student responses psychologically to the lectures that are happening. These responses include perceptions, interests and attitudes. The response has an effect on student competence after lecturing. We have observed these psychological responses using questionnaire, and we had analyze them on Biology Department students at Universitas Negeri Padang. The result shown about student"s perception, interest and attitude.

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“…The relevance of science in our daily lives is critical to shaping the attitudes of students towards science. A recent study by Schmidt et al (2019) showed how relevance statements in the science classroom were positively correlated to students' perception of the usefulness of science in their lives. This leads us to the question: How do we make science education more relevant to students?…”

Section: Teaching and Learning Contextualized Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Infusing Indigenous Knowledge in the Life Sciences Classroom: Design Principles for Creating an Ethnobiological Matrix

Kruger¹,

Beer²

2019

Proceedings of the 8th Teaching &Amp; Education Conference, Vienna

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A perennial problem facing South African science education is how to better contextualize curriculum content to a diverse student population. South Africa, who is often dubbed the 'rainbow nation' because of its racial and cultural diversity, also has to deal with a large spectrum of students in terms of socioeconomic status. In especially rural parts of the country, where indigenous knowledge is thriving, the 'western' science curriculum is not always accessible to all learners. By infusing relevant indigenous knowledge into curriculum themes, students will be able to better understand and appreciate the value of science in everyday life. Despite fundamental differences between the natural sciences and Indigenous Knowledge (IK) (e.g. the holistic nature of IK versus the reductionist nature of science), similarities in the processes also exist, e.g. the empirical, tentative and inferential nature of both. The responsibility thus lies with teacher educators to train teachers on how to effectively infuse IK in the classroom. This paper describes a rigorous method to create science context by means of ethnobiological studies which will be implementable in teacher education and ultimately infused in science classrooms. The research draws on the Matrix Method that was developed by De Beer and Van Wyk in the field of ethnobotany, and in this paper, the authors show how ethnozoology could also be included. The Matrix Method affords students the opportunity to, as scientific sleuths, engage in project-based learning, while also developing more nuanced understandings of the role that science plays in everyday life. Although the context is South African, the heuristic developed has universal application and could be used in any country.

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Why are we learning this? Using mixed methods to understand teachers’ relevance statements and how they shape middle school students’ perceptions of science utility

Cited by 40 publications

References 58 publications

Experiences, activities, and personal characteristics as predictors of engagement in STEM‐focused summer programs

Experiences, activities, and personal characteristics as predictors of engagement in STEM‐focused summer programs

Student psychological responses to english for biology course in biology department of universitas negeri padang

Infusing Indigenous Knowledge in the Life Sciences Classroom: Design Principles for Creating an Ethnobiological Matrix

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