Abstract
Context-based learning (CBL) approaches have been recommended and expanded in science education to make science more relevant to students by connecting science content with students’ daily life. Subsequently, in order to implement CBL at school, a group of scenarios has been produced by several stakeholders. However, there is a lack of resources to measure effectively what makes a good scenario. Thus, this study aims to develop and validate a scenario evaluation instrument to examine students’ perspectives on science career-related scenarios through the lens of relevance and interest. For this purpose, 25 science career-related scenarios and a measurement tool, Scenario Evaluation with Relevance and Interest (SERI), were developed by a team of researchers for the EU funded MultiCO project. Then, lower secondary school students from three different countries, Estonia, Finland, and the UK, were asked to respond to the newly developed instrument after reading the scenarios, and their responses were analyzed by factor analyses and multivariate analysis of variance. According to the result, this instrument has good construct validity and reliability. However, it indicates one issue of discriminant validity between two factors, individual dimension and societal dimension. Also, significant gender differences were found in the Estonian sample regarding students’ perspectives on the scenarios. Possible interpretations of the results and implications of the suggested measurement tool are discussed.
Highlights
In the science education community, students’ negative trends in science interest have been an issue in recent decades especially at the secondary school level
Five successive interventions using scenarios are being implemented in each country; an instrument, the Scenario Evaluation with Relevance and Interest (SERI) survey for measuring students’ perceptions of career-related scenarios, was developed; before the first intervention, a large-scale survey was carried out to evaluate the scenarios in all participating partners with the instrument, SERI; overall, 25 scenarios were evaluated by students from each country
While context-based learning (CBL) has been recommended and expanded in science education (Gilbert, 2006; King, 2012; Pilot & Bulte, 2006) and scenarios have been developed and introduced as the starting point of science lessons to relate science content to daily contexts in CBL approaches (Bolte et al, 2014; Bennett et al, 2007; Nielsen et al, 2008), there is a lack of resources to measure good scenarios that have been placed at the center of CBL in terms of relevance and interest
Summary
In the science education community, students’ negative trends in science interest have been an issue in recent decades especially at the secondary school level. It has been indicated that one of the major reasons giving rise to this phenomenon has been that science at school is irrelevant to students’ everyday life (Gilbert, 2006; Holbrook, 2008; Stuckey, Hofstein, Mamlok-Naaman & Eilks, 2013) This issue has resonated so much with educators, policymakers, and researchers that many projects have been initiated and conducted in order to make school science more relevant to students’ daily life, with the aim of drawing students’ attention to science and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers. One such attempt is the context-based science curricula movement, which was initiated in the 1970s and developed with various forms (Taconis & den Brok, 2016). A variety of scenarios has been produced from multinational projects to foster the relevance and meaningful learning of science and science education (e.g. PROFILES (Bolte, Holbrook, Mamlok-Naaman & Rauch, 2014) or PARSEL (Nielsen et al, 2008))
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
