Effect of explicit and reflective activity-based instruction on senior secondary physics students’ views towards Nature of Science

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigated the effect of explicit and reflective activity-based instruction (ERABI) on senior secondary physics students' views towards the Nature of Science (NOS) in Rwanda. We administered a questionnaire on NOS to a sample of 148 participants enrolled in the senior five physics-chemistry-biology combination. A mixed research approach that embedded a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design (experimental and control) was used. After the intervention which lasted for six weeks, a significant change in students' views about NOS was noted in all targeted NOS aspects in this study. The study found that the effect size of the intervention was large for all seven NOS aspects as eta squared was above 0.4 for targeted NOS aspects; moreover, a very large effect was noted for four NOS aspects, tentative nature (0.709), social and cultural contexts in science (0.605), creativity and imagination (0.562), and observation and inference (0.518). The normalised gain for all these aspects was also found to be high. We also found that the change in students' understanding pf NOS is not affected by school location (rural or urban), school status (day or boarding school) and gender. Therefore, the implementation of ERABI seems to provide an answer to promote the standard understanding of NOS.