Abstract
Much is known about high school students’ attitudes towards science but there is almost no research on what passion for science might look like and how it might be manifested. This exploratory case study took advantage of a unique group of highly gifted science students participating in the Australian Science Olympiad (N = 69) to explore their attitudes towards school science and science as presented in the Olympiad summer camp. In particular the role the summer camp might play in igniting the students’ passion for science was a focus of the research. Data were collected through a two-tiered survey of students’ attitudes towards school science, an evaluative survey of the Olympiad summer camp and in-depth interviews with six participants. Findings indicated that Olympiad students generally had positive attitudes towards school science with most selecting science as one of their favourite subjects. However, an underlying ambivalence about school science was noted in the data. In contrast, the Olympiad summer camp transformed students’ positive attitudes into passion for science. Seven themes emerged from the data providing a foundation for a model of what academic passion for science looks like.
Highlights
Much is known about high school students’ attitudes towards science but there is almost no research on what passion for science might look like and how it might be manifested
The exploratory case study research presented in this paper took advantage of a unique opportunity to work with an extraordinary group of high achieving students, Science Olympiad students, to explore their attitudes towards the science they experience in their regular school settings as well as science as experienced through the enrichment program of the Science Olympiad summer camp
In the context of this research, we considered the participating cohort of Australian high school Science Olympiad students to be gifted science students because they were successful in a national selective test for the summer camp and they have high academic ability as well as highly developed reasoning skills (Gagné, 1985, 1998)
Summary
Much is known about high school students’ attitudes towards science but there is almost no research on what passion for science might look like and how it might be manifested. This exploratory case study took advantage of a unique group of highly gifted science students participating in the Australian Science Olympiad (n=69) to explore their attitudes towards school science and science as presented in the Olympiad summer camp. The exploratory case study research presented in this paper took advantage of a unique opportunity to work with an extraordinary group of high achieving students, Science Olympiad students, to explore their attitudes towards the science they experience in their regular school settings as well as science as experienced through the enrichment program of the Science Olympiad summer camp. One of the implications garnered from Fredricks, Alfeld and Eccles’ findings was that by offering “cognitively complex tasks that are both meaningful and challenging” (p. 27) schools are more likely to become places to foster passion in gifted students
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