Learning nanotechnology with texts and comics: the impacts on students of different achievement levels

Abstract

Comics are popular with adolescents because of their features of humor, narrative, and visual imagery. The purposes of this study were to examine the learning outcomes and emotional perceptions of reading a science comic book and a science text booklet for students of different levels of achievement, and to explore the main factors of the two media which attract highschool students to learn science. A mixed-method quasiexperimental design was adopted. The participants were 697 grade ten students from eight schools with different levels of academic achievement. Two similar classes in each of the eight schools were assigned as the comic group or the text group. The results indicated that the science comic book benefited medium achievers more than the science text booklet did, but the contrary result was found for the high achievers. In comparison, the two media benefited the low achievers equally, but both had only a limited effect due to the students' lack of prior knowledge. We conclude four kinds of evidence, including perceived difficulty of comprehension, reasons for interest/disinterest, emotional perceptions of learning science, and learning time, to support the phenomenon of the learning benefit of media specific to certain achievers' science learning. ARTICLE HISTORY

The Use of Comics in Experimental Instructions in a Non-formal Chemistry Learning Context

“…They can be used as a vehicle through which (scientific) information is communicated (Arroio, 2011;Kennepohl & Roesky, 2008;Tatalovic, 2009). As a creative approach to science, they can represent real-world situations which have no clear answer, be interdisciplinary in nature, prove relevant to both the curriculum and students´ lives, and remain highly visible and accessible (Arroio, 2011;Hosler & Boomer, 2011;Lin & Lin, 2016). This can improve students' skills in dealing with everyday life and with socio-scientific issues.…”

“…A review of the literature shows that some research on the use of comics in science lessons has already been carried out (Hosler & Boomer, 2011;Lin & Lin, 2016;Spiegel et al, 2013;Tatalovic, 2009). A study by Kerneza and Kosir (2016) indicated a positive effect on reading literacy and reading motivation.…”

“…A study carried out by Lin and Lin (2016) showed that the combination of contextualized scientific language with visual representations and humor in science comics engages middle-lever achievers more than high-level achievers. The learning effect of comics on mediocre students was also higher than that produced using written texts.…”

“…They also have the potential to connect experimental tasks with students' daily life situations, personal experiences and a priori knowledge. Comics can also serve as a basis for young people to communicate with their peers (Arroio, 2011;Lin & Lin, 2016).…”

“…Sones had already mentioned this factor in 1944 and argued that comics as educational medium allow for simplified language and universal understanding. Later studies by Hosler andBoomer (2011), Lin andLin (2016) and Spiegel et al (2013) have shown that learning with comics has great potential for improving science retention among students with low levels of literacy. Our findings indicate similar effects, but do not limit the positive perception to lower achieving students.…”