Abstract
To test whether environmental immersion and mobile filmmaking (using smartphones or tablets) can engender positive attitudes to science, seventeen Year 10 (14-15 years old) drama students from Queen’s High School, New Zealand, were taken to Westland National Park to make videos about climate change using iPads (Immersion Group). Another fourteen students (Control Group) remained in Dunedin and also produced videos about climate change. Both groups had equal access to equipment, tutoring, incentives and footage. Yet, students in the Immersion Group were more likely to complete videos and produced videos of a higher quality. While there were no differences between the two groups in their attitudes to science before the experiment, afterwards the Immersion Group students had significantly more positive attitudes to doing science at school and beyond. The combination of environmental immersion and mobile filmmaking substantially increased interest in the environment and climate change, suggesting that it offers a promising tool for science education.
Highlights
Despite society’s increasing dependence upon science, it remains an area that is daunting and impenetrable to many, especially the young
In support of our hypothesis H1, engagement with the filmmaking activity was much higher for the Immersion Group that went to Westland National Park than the Control Group
Quality of the videos produced, a reflection of the degree of commitment of the students, was much higher overall for students in the Immersion Group: 12 (71%) of the films produced by students that went to Westland National Park met the minimum standards needed to be screened as part of the International Science Festival, whereas only 4 (50%) of the films made by students in Dunedin did so
Summary
Despite society’s increasing dependence upon science, it remains an area that is daunting and impenetrable to many, especially the young. There has been a significant and worrying decrease in science engagement by high school students (Osborne, Simon & Collins, 2003; Potvin & Hansi, 2014; Tröbst, Kleickmann, Lange-Schubert, Rothkopf & Möller, 2016). This is especially so in New Zealand, where high school students are opting to take science subjects in ever-lower numbers in the final three years of high school, when science subjects are optional (Glukman, 2011). Research suggests that engagement in science increases when students: (i) participate in the production of something like a film or podcast, rather than just reading or hearing about science (Rifkin, Longnecker, Leach & Davis, 2010a; Rifkin, Longnecker, Leach, Davis & Orthia, 2010b; Martin, Davis & Sandretto 2019), (ii) publish the product in the public domain, with this augmenting the engagement because students can see the worth of what they are undertaking (Saul, Kohnen, Newman & Pearce, 2012), (iii) can ask questions of real scientists (Collins, 2010), (iv) are “hooked” on science that is initially disguised by focussing on an attractive or “sexy” topic (Trautmann, Fee, Tomasek & Bergey, 2013), (v) deal with science conveyed through storytelling rather than fact-based learning (Davis, 2010), and (vi) can undertake activities that employ the one item that many teenagers have with them at virtually all times: their mobile devices (i.e. smartphones and tablets) (Bressler, 2006; Park, 2011)
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