Pupil interest in physics: A survey in Finland

Jari Lavonen,Reijo Byman,Kalle Juuti,Anna Uitto,Veijo Meisalo

doi:10.5617/nordina.486

Abstract

Factors interrelating with interest in physics learning are gender, perceived relevance, contents and contexts of physics, and teaching methods. Finnish ninth grade secondary school pupil interest in physics in different contexts was investigated with a survey conducted in connection with the international ROSE project. The sample consisted of 3626 pupils (median age 15) in 61 schools. Means of all items that belong to school physics context for both girls and boys were under the middle of the scale. The most interesting things (especially for girls) were connected with human being and the less interesting (especially for girls) were connected in artefacts and technological processes. Astronomical context was rather interesting for both genders. The main message of the study is that interesting new curricular approaches and textbooks can be developed by combining technological and human or astronomical contexts.

Highlights

There is a long tradition from the 1960s onwards to the study of pupil interest, behaviour, achievement, and attitudes (‘pupil voice’) towards physics (Sjøberg, 2000; Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003; Bennett, 2003)
In order to answer the research question, we organised a survey alongside the Finnish contribution to the international comparative research project ROSE (The Relevance Of Science Education, here ROSE INT) aiming to shed light on factors of importance to the learning of science and technology in comprehensive school (Schreiner & Sjøberg, 2004)
The ROSE INT questionnaire has been prepared through international cooperation so that the findings could help teachers and researchers to make science education and learning more interesting

Summary

Introduction

There is a long tradition from the 1960s onwards to the study of pupil interest, behaviour, achievement, and attitudes (‘pupil voice’) towards physics (Sjøberg, 2000; Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003; Bennett, 2003). Preted interest “as a context-specific or topic-specific motivational characteristic of personality, which is composed of intrinsic feeling-related and value-related valences.” Krapp (2003) has assumed that the fulfilment of so-called basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and social relatedness are important for the development of interest. In the context-based approaches pupils might become familiar with the electromagnetic spectrum through learning about medical techniques for seeing inside the body, or explore the views of different members of a community on the impact of locating a chemical industry nearby This contrasts with more traditional approaches, which cover scientific ideas first, and conclude with a brief mention of applications (Bennett, Hogarth & Lubben, 2003). We focus on Finnish lower secondary school pupils’ interests (median age 15) in certain physics contents and contexts. The research question is: Which are the physics contents and contexts that Finnish lower secondary school boys and girls are interested in?

Method

Results

Discussion