Can 'ears-on' help hands-on science learning for girls and boys?

Abstract

The primary objective of the research was to establish whether the use of the newly developed audiopilot (a personalized auditory commentary system) facilitates both hands-on exploration and the understanding of scientific principles in a science centre. Twenty-four ten year-old children used the AudioPilot while they interacted with a set of pendulum experiments. A control group of 28 children from the same classes experienced the same experiments but without the Audio-Pilot. Videos were made of all the children and their behaviours were later coded. They completed a questionnaire about pendulums before and after going to the science centre. A gender effect emerged. The audio-pilot greatly facilitated the girls' hands-on activity and improved their questionnaire scores, which was highly statistically significant. This suggests that auditory commentaries are a good way of communicating difficult scientific concepts, especially to girls. Further research is needed to confirm whether this finding can be generalized over different schools.