Improving Student Attitudes about Learning Science and Student Scientific Reasoning Skills

Abstract

Student attitudes about learning science and student ideas about the nature of science were compared at the end of two astronomy courses taught in Fall 2007, a course with a traditional astronomy curriculum and a transformed course, whose traditional astronomy curriculum was supplemented by an embedded curriculum that explicitly addressed the nature of science and student metacognition (i.e., thinking about one's own thinking.) The embedded curriculum in the transformed course gave students practice at evaluating examples of valid science and pseudoscience found on the internet; it also provided students opportunities to discuss what they think about learning science. Student attitudes and ideas were assessed using the epistemological beliefs assessment for physical science (EBAPS) survey, interviews, and written responses to an open-ended exam question. Our results indicate that the embedded curriculum led the majority of students in the transformed course to think that anyone can learn science, whereas a majority of students in the traditional course thought that only individuals with innate abilities can learn science and think scientifically. Students in the transformed course also reported much more confidence in their ability to evaluate the scientific validity of information found on the internet. Furthermore, students from the transformed course valued making sense of science more than students from the traditional course. The embedded curriculum could readily be used in any course for nonscience majors, not just introductory astronomy.

Epistemic belief structures within introductory astronomy

“…The EBAPS suffers from a distinct lack of validity studies within literature, as others have also noted, despite its prominence as one of the more well-known epistemic instruments within physics education research [3][4][5][6][7]. It is important that instruments as influential as the EBAPS experience multiple validation studies so as to further establish the legitimacy of what the instrument claims to assess [8][9][10].…”

Transformational Teaching: Theoretical Underpinnings, Basic Principles, and Core Methods

“…In addition, whereas teachers’ objectives used to be relatively constrained to helping students master course content, it is not uncommon for teachers’ goals to now also involve some combination of increasing students’ academic self-efficacy (Caprara et al . 2011; Marsh and Martin 2011), improving their self-regulatory capability (Boekaerts 2002; Zimmerman and Schunk 2011), enhancing their feelings toward learning (Duncan and Arthurs 2012), and instilling in them values and skills that promote lifelong learning (Aspin et al . 2012).…”

Epistemic beliefs of non-STEM majors regarding the nature of science: Where they are and what we can do

“…Research into student epistemologies and scientific literacy has shown that non-science majors who take general education science courses have degraded attitudes toward science upon completion of these courses. [7][8][9] (We note that these authors use the term "attitudes" while we prefer the more accurate "epistemologies.") Exit interviews and final exam questions in these studies revealed that many students also leave these courses concerned that the ability to learn science is an innate trait that cannot be honed.…”