Students' mind wandering in macroscopic and submicroscopic textual narrations and its relationship with their reading comprehension

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to investigate students' mind wandering while reading different types of textual narrations (macroscopic and submicroscopic) in chemistry. Another goal was to determine the relationship between mind wandering and students' reading comprehension. The participants were 65 female ninth grade students in Oman. Using a computer screen, participants were required to read about sodium chloride. A probe-catch procedure was used to measure students' mind wandering. Half of the slides presented textual narrations at the macroscopic level and the other half presented narrations at the submicroscopic level. We gave the students a paper and pencil reading comprehension test at the conclusion of the reading task. The findings indicated that participants' mind wandering while reading submicroscopic textual narrations was significantly higher when compared to reading macroscopic textual narrations. Also, there was a significant negative relationship between mind wandering and reading comprehension for both macroscopic and submicroscopic textual narrations. Implications and future research are discussed.

A combined experimental and individual-differences investigation into mind wandering during a video lecture.

“…Another important conclusion from individual-differences studies is that TUT rates are reliable: Students who mind-wander more during one reading task also tend to mind-wander more in others (Al-Balushi & Al-Harthy, 2015;McVay & Kane, 2012b). TUT rates thus seem to capture something meaningful about sustained attention during reading.…”

The development of students' justifications for their positions regarding two theoretical models: Electron cloud or sodium chloride crystal—After engaging in different learning activities

“…The findings of the study indicate that different active learning activities exerted different cognitive demands on participants. The debating activity refocused participants' attention on the submicroscopic structural orientation of scientific models—the favorite and recommended language of different chemistry education researchers (Al‐Balushi & Al‐Harthy, ; Milenković, Segedinac, & Hrin, ; Prilliman, ; Treagust & Chandrasegaran, ; Warfa, Roehrig, Schneider, & Nyachwaya, ). This was evident in the discussions during the debating activity and then in individual students' written responses after the conclusion of the debating activity.…”

An analysis of the visual representation of redox reactions and related content in Brazilian secondary school chemistry textbooks

“…Despite different interpretations, varying representations, and distinct terminologies (Gilbert and Treagust, 2009), Johnstone's model is still used by many researchers in chemistry education (Treagust et al, 2003;Eilks et al, 2007;Al-Balushi and Al-Harthy, 2015;Becker et al, 2015;Irby et al, 2016). For this study, we decided to start our investigation from using the chemistry triangle as initially proposed by Johnstone (1991).…”