Abstract

Received 20 January 2015Received in revised form23 February 201514 April 2015Accepted 20 April 2015Students are engaged in classroom learning, and classroom learning occurs not only through conversation but also through nonverbal behavior. In science classrooms especially, there are meaningful nonverbal behaviors such as practical activities like observation and measurement. But these behaviors have not been properly investigated by existing instruments that try to measure students’ engagement. This study aims to develop a new instrument for analyzing students’ behavioral engagement especially in science classrooms. The method of developing the instrument was structured along three steps. First, student behaviors have been classified into fourteen categories through literature review and a series of observation of elementary science classroom. Second, based on these, a framework for analyzing student behavioral engagement has been developed. With the framework, every student moment could be labeled as Participatory Speech or Participatory Silence or Non-Participatory Speech or Non-Participatory Silence. Third, an instrument to which the framework is applied has been developed by using Microsoft Excel. As a trial, two fourth-grade students in elementary science class were analyzed with this instrument. The results of the trial analysis shows that the longest period of a science lesson was occupied by Participatory Silence (63% and 72%). Among the participatory silence, ‘listening’ was the most common (51% and 42% of the trial lesson) and ‘observing’ which is a specific behavior to science was the fourth position (17% and 17% of the trial lesson). It is expected that the developed instrument could be used in improving our understanding of the patterns of student engagement in science classrooms.

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