Assessing understanding of the nature of science and science self-efficacy in undergraduates involved in research in an introductory geology course

Abstract

We changed the curriculum of our introductory geology lab to include a six-week, student driven research project focused on local groundwater and surface water issues, seeking to determine whether or not this experience was an effective means to increase students’ understanding of the nature of science and self-efficacy towards science. In addition to developing the research project curriculum, we worked with other university faculty to create a local hydrology research station which included eight monitoring wells and a stream gage, allowing students to collect their own water-level and water-quality data as well as to retrieve automatically collected data. In order to measure nature of science understanding, we used a modified version of the Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry questionnaire (Liang et al., 2005; Clough, 2010). We modified a vocational self-efficacy survey (Riggs et al. 1994) to measure science self-efficacy. Both instruments had average Cronbach’s alpha values >0.8, making them reliable for our study. After three semesters of collecting data, we have found that an authentic research project slightly improves, but does not significantly increase overall nature of science understanding or science self-efficacy. Disaggregating the data into demographic sub-groups, nature of science understanding increased relatively more in nonSTEM students than STEM students, and science self-efficacy increased relatively more in STEM students than non-STEM students. 1 Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, elizabethlmoss@gmail.com 2 Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, cinzia@iastate.edu 3 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University 4 Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Iowa State University