Californian science students' perceptions of their classroom learning environments

Abstract

This study utilised the What Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC) questionnaire to examine factors that influence Californian students' perceptions of their learning environment. Data were collected from 665 USA middle school science students in 11 Californian schools. Several background variables, such as gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and class size, were included in the study. A hierarchical analysis of variance was conducted. Results from this study indicate that some scales of the WIHIC are more inclined to measure personal or idiosyncratic features of student perceptions and other class features. A variable that consistently affected students' perceptions was student gender. Generally speaking, girls perceived their learning environment more positively than did boys. RationaleResearch conducted over the past 30 years has shown that the quality of the classroom environment is a significant determinant of student learning (Fraser, 1994(Fraser, , 1998. That is, students perform better and have more positive attitudes toward the subject taught when they perceive the classroom environment positively. Numerous studies in maths, physics, chemistry, and biology education have shown that student perceptions of the classroom environment account for appreciable amounts of variance in learning outcomes, often beyond that attributable to background student characteristics. Moreover, students' perceptions of their teachers' behaviour do act

Interpersonal behaviour styles of primary education teachers during science lessons

“…It has been shown that enjoyment (or pleasure) is strongly related to other attitudinal concepts and elements, such as relevance, confidence, interest and effort (e.g. den Brok 2001). Thus, the more enjoyment that students experience in science, the more relevance that they attach to science for their future education and occupation, the more confidence that they have in performing well in science, the more interested that they are in science, and the more effort that they are willing to invest into learning science.…”

“…The Australian version of the QTI has shown adequate reliability and validity, both for primary and secondary education students (e.g. den Brok 2001;Fraser 2002;Wubbels and Levy 1993).…”

“…• Teachers with different profiles differ in the degree to which they are able to stimulate students in the classroom, the degree to which they differentiate their teaching in terms of teaching methods and the degree to which they provide clear instructions (Brekelmans et al 2000;den Brok 2001;Wubbels et al 2006;Wubbels and Levy 1993).…”

“…den Brok 2001;Wubbels and Levy 1993). The Australian primary education version of the QTI was distributed among the students.…”

“…First, an exploratory factor analysis (maximum likelihood, rotation by hand; e.g. den Brok 2001) was conducted on the (aggregated) scale scores in order to see whether two dimensions (or factors) were present in the data. This analysis indicated that two factors with eigenvalues larger than 1.0 could be extracted.…”