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The Effect of
ScienceTechnologySociety Teaching
on Students Attitudes toward Science
and Certain Aspects of Creativity
a
To cite this article: MeeKyeong Lee & Ibrahim Erdogan (2007) The Effect of
ScienceTechnologySociety Teaching on Students Attitudes toward Science and Certain
Aspects of Creativity, International Journal of Science Education, 29:11, 1315-1327, DOI:
10.1080/09500690600972974
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500690600972974
RESEARCH REPORT
mklee@kice.re.kr
0Taylor
00
Dr.
000002006
Mee-KyeongLee
&
Francis
International
10.1080/09500690600972974
TSED_A_197198.sgm
0950-0693
Original
2006
and
Article
(print)/1464-5289
Francis
JournalLtd
of Science
(online)
Education
Introduction
Contemporary science education reform emphasizes the development of students
scientific understanding, critical thinking, creativity, wonderment, self-directed
learning, problem-solving abilities, and active engagement with science (American
Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; National Research Council,
1996; National Science Teachers Association, 1990, 199091). Engaging students
in science is crucial to developing more positive attitudes toward science and
improving creativity skills. Student views of science are strongly influenced by their
experiences at school. Brooks and Brooks (1999) describe what students typically
experience in traditional classrooms (Table 1).
Schools typically start with an externally imposed curriculum. Students are
exposed to teacher-dominated instruction: lectures, drill and practice on sets of
*Corresponding author. 25-1 Samchung-Dong, Jongro-Ku, Korea Institute of Curriculum &
Evaluation, Seoul 110-230, Korea. Email: mklee@kice.re.kr
ISSN 0950-0693 (print)/ISSN 1464-5289 (online)/07/11131513
2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09500690600972974
Penick (1996) argues that creativity does not happen by chance and provides
some practical suggestions for creating an environment where questions work best
for improving student creativity. According to him, science teaching that uses
provocative questions and creates a safe environment for exploring, risk-taking,
experimentation, and speculation, can help improve students creativity.
Many studies indicate the importance of teachers, teaching strategies, learning
environments, and parental influences on student attitudes toward science and
creativity (Carey & Shavelson, 1988; Davis, 1991; Feldhusen & Treffinger, 1980;
Heron, 1997; Morrell & Lederman, 1998; Reynolds & Walberg, 1992; Shin, 2000;
Shymansky & Penick, 1981; Sternberg & Lubart, 1991; Torrance, 1981).
However, there has been little sustained analysis of how the STS approach impacts
on student attitudes towards science and certain aspect of creativity skills,
Test
Control (n = 7 classes)
Pretest
Post-test
Pretest
Post-test
Experimental (n = 7 classes)
SD
2.86
2.80
2.77
2.97
0.54
0.52
0.56
0.58
Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations of the pretest and post-test
scores measured by the ASI instrument.
Figure 1 illustrates that positive attitudes toward science increased among
students taught with STS approaches, whereas the positive attitude decreased
among students taught with traditional methods.
The results of the ANCOVA test for student attitude towards science indicate
that there are significant differences in attitudes toward science between classes
taught with traditional methods and those with STS approaches (F(1, 6.11) =
15.340, p = .008).
Figure 1. Differences in changes in attitudes toward science between students in the control and experimental groups
3
2.95
2.9
Mean
2.85
Traditional Methods
2.8
STS Approaches
2.75
2.7
2.65
Pretest
Figure 1.
Post-test
Differences in changes in attitudes toward science between students in the control and
experimental groups
Table 3.
Group
Control (traditional methods)
Experimental (STS approaches)
Adjusted M
2.77
2.98
Pretest
Post-test
SD
SD
SD
SD
7.74
9.25
9.45
10.55
3.65
3.71
4.71
4.47
7.90
9.97
9.39
10.88
4.16
4.49
5.16
4.84
7.96
10.17
9.81
10.95
4.17
4.21
5.05
4.77
9.02
9.66
10.35
12.65
4.68
4.57
4.88
5.97
Table 3 shows the adjusted post-test means for the control and experimental groups.
The adjusted means are generated when ANCOVA is used. Occasionally the mean
pretest scores will differ significantly by chance. The adjusted means indicate observed
gains to the effect of the experimental treatment rather than to differences in initial
scores (Gall et al., 2002). The adjusted post-test mean of the experimental group is
higher than that of the control group, as Table 3 shows. This means that attitudes
toward science in the experimental groups improved more than in the control groups.
Student Creativity was measured using the ASC instrument. The ASC instrument
included three different subscales: Questioning, Reasoning, and Predicting Consequences. Table 4 presents the means and standard deviations for Student Creativity.
Figures 2 and 3 show trends of changes over time in student creativity. Figure 2 indicate that the post-test scores of students taught with traditional methods are similar to
their pretest scores. Figure 3 indicates that there are observed improvements in creativity among students taught with STS approaches, except in the Questioning sub-scale.
Figure 3.
2. Patterns of changes in creativity among students with
taughtSTS
with
approaches
traditional methods
12.00
10.00
8.00
Mean
Total scores
Questioning
Reasoning
Predicting Consequences
Post-test
Pretest
6.00
Post-test
4.00
2.00
0.00
Total Scores
Questioning
Reasoning
Predicting
Consequences
Figure 2.
Mean
10.00
8.00
Pretest
6.00
Post-test
4.00
2.00
0.00
Total Scores
Questioning
Reasoning
Predicting
Consequences
Figure 3.
ANCOVA was used to compare creativity between the control and experimental
groups. = 0.025 was assigned to each of the ANCOVA tests, applying a Bonferroni correction. The results reveal significant differences in the total post-test scores
with the ASC between control and experimental groups (F(1, 6.01) = 9.504, p =
.022). However, there were no significant differences in Questioning (F(1, 18.687)
= 0.317, p = .58), Reasoning (F(1, 19.372) = 0.044, p = .836), and Predicting
Consequences (F(1, 6.488) = 6.296, p = .043) for the subscales.
Table 5 presents the adjusted post-test means for the control and experimental
groups. The adjusted post-test means are bigger in Total Scores and Predicting
Consequences in the experimental groups than in those in control groups. The
adjusted post-test mean in questioning in the experimental groups, however, is
smaller than the one in the control groups.
Discussion and Interpretation
The results of the analyses support the idea that STS approaches are effective in
improving student learning outcomes, including the development both of more
Table 5.
Group
Control (traditional
method)
Experimental (STS
approaches)
Total scores
Questioning
Reasoning
Predicting Consequences
7.80
11.11
10.28
11.14
8.90
10.54
10.49
12.90
Conclusions
In this study, significant differences were found in the extent to which more positive
attitudes toward science and increasing creativity skills were produced when
comparing the experimental groups who were taught with STS approaches and the
control groups who were taught with traditional methods.
STS approaches are effective in encouraging students to develop more positive
attitudes toward science so that students become more interested in and motivated
to study science. They also support student critical thinking, logical reasoning, the
use of inquiry, and more creative approaches to problem-solving. Students more
frequently ask unique questions that excite their own interests, those of other
students and of teacher, and acquire the skills needed to suggest possible causes
and effects of certain observations and actions. The results of this study support
the previous research findings indicating that creative thinking skills can be learned
with practice (Cronin, 1989) and that teaching and learning based on STS
approach are effective for significant growth in developing more positive attitudes
towards science and in increasing student creativity skills (Cronin, 1989; Shin,
2000; Yager, 1996).
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