Contextualizing instruction: Leveraging students' prior knowledge and experiences to foster understanding of middle school science

Abstract

Contextualizing science instruction involves utilizing students' prior knowledge and everyday experiences as a catalyst for understanding challenging science concepts. This study of two middle school science classrooms examined how students utilized the contextualizing aspects of project‐based instruction and its relationship to their science learning. Observations of focus students' participation during instruction were described in terms of a contextualizing score for their use of the project features to support their learning. Pre/posttests were administered and students' final artifacts were collected and evaluated. The results of these assessments were compared with students' contextualizing scores, demonstrating a strong positive correlation between them. These findings provide evidence to support claims of contextualizing instruction as a means to facilitate student learning, and point toward future consideration of this instructional method in broader research studies and the design of science learning environments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 79–100, 2008

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“…For the first HPL principle of "identifying students prior knowledge" -context can activate concepts from prior knowledge 2 and identifying misconceptions that can lead to adjustments in teaching that will repair them 6,7 . In an exit survey one student said, "Relating things to my daily life helped me to retain information better."…”

“…This prior knowledge consists of preconceptions (which may or may not be correct), which may persist during instruction and act as barriers to learning. Contextualization to connect students' prior conceptual knowledge in class can help activate that knowledge and promote learning 2 . A second principle is about how experts and novices learn and transfer knowledge suggests that, to develop competence, students must have deep content understanding and that their facts and ideas need to be organized in a conceptual framework that facilitates retrieval and transfer to new applications 3,4 .…”

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“…According to Binnie (2004) contextual learning is very efficient, especially for raising learners' interest and increasing students' participation in the learning process. In addition, contextual learning elements not only increase the learner's motivation for the study task, but also provide cognitive support to see the similarities and differences and to organize ideas (Rivet & Krajcik, 2008). Contextual learning emphasizes higher-level thinking, knowledge transfer across academic disciplines, and collecting, analyzing and synthesizing information and data from multiple sources and viewpoints (Smith, 2000).…”

HEAd'15 - International Conference on Higher Education Advances - Proceedings

“…According to Binnie (2004) contextual learning is very efficient, especially for raising learners' interest and increasing students' participation in the learning process. In addition, contextual learning elements not only increase the learner's motivation for the study task, but also provide cognitive support to see the similarities and differences and to organize ideas (Rivet & Krajcik, 2008 academic disciplines, and collecting, analyzing and synthesizing information and data from multiple sources and viewpoints (Smith, 2000). Contextual learning facilitates learning in which students employ their academic understanding and abilities in a variety of out-of-school contexts to solve complex, real-world problems, both alone and in various groups (Shelley-Tolbert et al, 2000).…”