A study on motivation and learning effects

Abstract

Using real-life contexts has a long-standing tradition and is considered as an important issue in both current science education and educational psychology. Drawing on research in both areas, as well as on practice reports from science classrooms, the present contribution deals with a specific form of establishing such contexts, viz. context by newspaper story problems (NSP). Using the particular form of science problems based on newspaper articles and the real-life contexts provided by them, effects on both motivation and learning were studied.

In a quasi-experimental comparison of 6 physics classes of secondary level 1 (N=122; grade 10, topic: energy) learning with newspaper based problems vs. conventional textbook problems (same content, lesson plan and teacher) showed considerable positive effects. This holds for general motivation, including several subscales (p<0.01,ω²=0.52) as well as for achievement, including transfer (p<0.01, ω²=0.20). Moreover, these results show robustness towards to various individual and classroom features (e.g. gender, non-verbal intelligence and school type), and at least mid-term temporal stability. Newspaper story problems thus appear as a useful element of context-based science teaching.

Introduction: context-based science education and story contexts

Several recent reviews point out that context-based approaches and real-life connections are currently considered as a central issue in science education in general (Fensham, 2009 and Bennett et al., 2007) and in physics education in particular (Taasoobshirazi and Carr, 2008, Kuhn, 2005, Kuhn, 2010, Kuhn and Müller, 2005a and Kuhn and Müller, 2005b). In a broad understanding of the term, context based science education (CBSE) is defined as “using concepts and process skills in real-life contexts that are relevant to students from diverse backgrounds” (Glynn and Koballa, 2005, p. 75). Making (or trying to do so) science issues relevant to students themselves, their families and their peers is opposed to the wide-spread perception of especially physics (or more generally: science) as being dry, impersonal and irrelevant, and this is supposed to have positive effects both on motivation and learning (Bennett et al., 2007). PISA (OECD, 2006) follows a similar understanding of CBSE, repeatedly emphasizing the importance of tasks and problems “that could be part of the actual experience or practice of the participant in some real-world setting”, and it “places most value on tasks that could be encountered in a variety of real-world situations” (as can be seen also from the very items used in the study). Moreover, PISA points out the following feature of context-based learning: problems encountered in real-world settings are usually not stated in the disciplinary terms to be learned or applied. Thus, a kind of “translation”, i.e. a terminological and conceptual reframing is initiated, representing an important step of cognitive activation. It has to be emphasized that even such a basic understanding of “context” is far from being trivial or educationally shallow, even though there is a discussion around the idea of CBSE with positions going far beyond that (see e.g. Gilbert et al., 2011). The present contribution pursues this line of research and development and aims at combining the general approach of CBSE with a specific format of establishing contexts, viz. “stories as context”. Beginning, embedding, and connecting teaching content and sequences with an interesting story is a promising way of relating it to contexts beyond school. A particular form for this are newspaper story problems (NSP). 

From a practical point of view, the double rationale behind NSP is that (i) newspapers and newspaper articles as such stand for out-of-school, real-life contexts per se and (ii) journalists are supposed to be experts for writing interesting, good stories (so it is good advice to draw on this know-how). Good practice reports about successful realizations and existing collections of examples of using newspapers for mathematics and science literacy purposes are available, both on the international and several national levels (extensively in mathematics, see e.g. Herget and Scholz, 1998 and Paulos, 1995). The same is true to some extent in biology (Gardner et al., 2009, Hoots, 1993 and Jarman and MacClune, 2001) and in chemistry (Haupt, 2005, Glaser and Carson, 2005 and Toby, 1997) as well as in physics education (Armbrust, 2001). Jarman and McClune (2007)give an excellent introduction with many examples about the use of newspapers in science education in general.

For a review on uses and purposes of science teaching with newspapers see Jarman and McClune (2002). Having CBSE in mind it is interesting to note that within their sample (in Northern Ireland) “links with everyday life” were by far those most frequently stated as main intention (76%) and main benefit (62%). From a theoretical point of view,Norris and Phillips (2003) have convincingly argued that literacy in the basic or fundamental sense (including newspapers) is central to scientific literacy.

Moreover, the idea has a long-standing tradition for general literacy purposes, from the “Use the News” series in the Journal of Reading (Kossack, 1987) to the “Newspapers in Education (NIE)” programmes of several national newspaper associations (Kultusminister der Länder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland/Bundesverbands Deutscher Zeitungsverleger (KMK/BDZV), 2006, Newspaper Association of America Foundation (NAAF), 2007, Newspaper Association of America Foundation (NAAF), 2010a, Newspaper Association of America Foundation (NAAF), 2010b and Newspaper Association of America Foundation (NAAF), 2011).

From the research point of view, Fensham (2009) emphasizes in the “implications for teaching” section of his review the opportunities of a “context by story” approach to science teaching, in particular for motivational/affective aspects. As one important research finding among others, he states that the unexpected gender neutrality found for many countries in PISA 2000 “to have resulted, at least in part, from a number of the presenting contexts being stories that involved people and science” (Fensham, 2009).

Looking more closely, research has put forward several theoretical and empirical arguments in favor of “context by story”, “narrative contextualization” and similar approaches, and explanations of its potential. These will be reviewed in the following, both for motivation and cognition/learning.