Strategies to raise interest for science in tomorrow´s students

Abstract

<p>The interest of secondary level students for science and technology has been decreasing in the recent years. According to PISA 2018 (Programme for International Student Assessment) Spain is scored in the level 2 (483 points) in science, slightly below of other countries of the EU like France (493), Ireland (496), Germany (503) or United Kingdom (505) and far from the top of the list: China (590), Singapore (551) or Estonia (530).<br>There is a wide gap between top-performing and low-achieving students in our secondary school. Many reasons could be responsible of this fact, such as socio-economic status, gender or immigrant background. Science teachers cannot ignore this tendency; we need to act in order to awake the interest for science and technology of our students. <br>The aim of this paper is to present ideas and strategies followed in the last years by science teachers of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer secondary school to increase the motivation of students for experimental science and the improvement of their academic results. The strategies are divided in three groups according to their temporal length: long, medium and short.<br>Long term strategies include working with small groups of students with similar capacities and cooperative learning. Medium term strategies entail the annual participation in the Fair of Science and in a multimedia Science competition based on the Trivial Pursuit. Short term activities involve Lab practices, Computer games and guided tours to permanent and temporary exhibitions.  <br>Although we do not have statistical analyses of the academic results over a long period of time following the teaching practices described above, we can appreciate a qualitative improvement if we replace some theorical framework of science for experiences that consider student´s interest and capabilities, helping them with individualized learning and assessment in ways that foster their engagement and talents. In this path, we have used teaching-learning´s index to quantify the academic evolution of students over the last 3 years in Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer secondary school and the results show really good evolution in “percentage of students with all the subjects passed” and the “successful completion of the grade level previous to the last, in the high school”.</p>