Ecocultural Factors in Students' Ability To Relate ... - ACS Publications

In the Classroom

Ecocultural Factors in Students' Ability To Relate Science Concepts Learned at School and Experienced at Home: Implications for Chemistry Education Kunle Oke Oloruntegbe* Department of Science and Technical Education, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State Nigeria *[email protected] Adakole Ikpe School of Science and Technology, National Open University of Nigeria, Victoria Island, Lagos PMB 2215, Nigeria

In today's society, the expectations for science education seem greater than in the past (1-4). Governments, parents, and educational policy makers are interested not only in ensuring that pupils are engaged in meaningful science delivery, but also in seeing that chemists who will shape our future are able to make rational decisions about consequential matters. Pertinent issues relating, for example, to water shortage, pollution, and climate change require knowledgeable and well-informed chemists and citizens to affect positive changes in the environment and influence policy makers in taking worthwhile decisions. The ability to effectively educate future scientists and citizens is predicated in part upon how students are able to relate what they learn in school to their daily lives and how teachers have been helping students establish such connections during science teaching and learning. The capacity to make connections in turn may be related to how supportive the socioeconomic variables of parents are in enhancing the school performance of students and how the activities children engage in at home act to consolidate school learning. Thus, this paper reports on three aims: (i) whether students are able to link concepts learned in chemistry classes at school with everyday phenomena in their homes; (ii) the impact of parental socioeconomic status on students' ability to relate daily home activities to chemistry concepts learned in school; and (iii) whether chemistry teachers cite examples of daily life to relate chemistry concepts while teaching. Literature Review A substantial number of studies have acknowledged the importance of parents, teachers, and peers in the achievement of students in schools (5-10). Cultural background and parental socioeconomic status have also been shown to have profound influence on school achievement. These are considered a major predictor of cognitive achievement (5-7); they exert a very strong effect on and determine learning outcomes (8, 9); and they influence students' perception of teachers' interpersonal behavior and classroom learning environment(9, 10). Many studies have suggested that high socioeconomic parental status correlates strongly with better student performance. In their studies, Roehlkepartain (7) and Rogoff (11) observed a high risk of dropout among students from disadvantaged home environments, and 266

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found that low socioeconomic status relates negatively with a wide range of indicators of child and adolescent well-being. In contrast, a Brazilian study by Pedrosa et al. (12) found that certain selected students from educationally and economically disadvantaged background had a higher relative performance than their complementary group, something they termed “education resilience”. This observation is somewhat surprising because it is often assumed that having a disadvantaged background hinders students' performance and subsequent advancement and enrollment for higher studies. In this Brazilian example, the students from a lower income stratus had clear academic potential, and demonstrated it quickly at university, in fact outperforming their peers from higher family income background and often from private schools. The present study thus chose to examine the potential effect of socioeconomic status of students on their ability to relate school science to real-life activities at home. Research Problem Students' interest in science is low in Nigerian secondary schools as it is in many education systems across the globe. There are declining student enrollments in science and science-based disciplines in universities and polytechnics. Lewis (13) observed that there is a trend for young people to avoid studying advanced science. Sally and Lesile (14) confirmed the same, while Djallo (3), Orlando (15), Sjøberg (16), and Sjøberg and Schreiner (17) sounded the alarm fearing that science education is in danger of becoming a little-studied subject area. One hypothesis proposed to account for this observed trend in a number of countries is the gap between knowledge gained in school science and the ordinary everyday experiences of students in the home. If students do not see science as a real-life experience, they are likely to experience difficulty in learning science and become disenchanted with studying it. In 1900, Dewey emphasized this pedagogical dilemma, writing in the School and Society (18): From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself, while on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school.

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Vol. 88 No. 3 March 2011 pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. 10.1021/ed900047t Published on Web 12/28/2010

In the Classroom

Are teachers consciously using the phenomena from their students' daily life as examples in presenting material on chemistry? This study explores these dimensions of the broader problem of flagging interest and performance in chemistry classes, as reflected in a representative Nigerian sampling. Given this problem, is there any identifiable relationship between parental socioeconomic status and student capacity to relate chemistry concepts learned in schools?

from the former category tend to send their children to private schools (20, 21). Family size is another cultural variable that might have accounted for unequal representation, as parents from lower socioeconomic status tend to have a higher number of children (22). The sample might be more representative in other settings where these two factors do not exert much influence on student enrollment and distribution in public versus private schools.

Rationale of the Study

Instrument for Data Collection

The broader aim of this investigation is to shed light on this possible disconnect between school science and student life at home, with the intention of finding ways to improve the learning experiences of students in chemistry and enhancing their performance in skills and cognitive achievement through consolidated home activities. It is a common occurrence for many parents in Nigeria to engage their children in chores. Some parents see the practice as an opportunity to raise family income. Some indigent students are too poor to pay for school. Thus, for part of the day, they may be engaging in activities such as selling in the market and working in the garden to finance their education. Yet, these groups of students will still be required to attend school each day and may perhaps perform as well as or sometimes even better than their more economically fortunate counterparts as the case was in Brazilian sample (12). Although science is a global phenomenon with established and universally accepted ways of doing things, some peculiarities in the children's local environments could influence and aid their science learning in and out of school. Building on the relevant experiences of students from whatever background through a “place-based” approach (18) to learning within a framework of experiential education (19) could heighten their motivation and enhance their performance in basic chemistry. Exploring students' learning from chores would be a worthwhile effort in improving the chemistry-learning environment.

The authors developed a validated, structured questionnaire that was used for data collection. The questionnaire consisted of four sections. A mixed-methodology approach (23, 24) was employed in developing the instrument. According to Coll and Charpmana (23) and Coll et al. (24), a mixed-methodology approach is a trade-off situation in which researchers must choose between the depth of understanding provided from qualitative studies using instruments like observation, versus the generalizability of a quantitative approach with the use of questionnaire, test, and inventory. Observing students' learning while they perform home-based chores might be better but would necessitate a smaller sample size that might call into question the value of the study. On the other hand, using a multiple-choice test might be more suitable, but it would not provide the type of data needed in this study. The authors decided to use a questionnaire combined with a checklist and explanation for the respondents. The first section deals with the socioeconomic status of the students. Responses were sought on traditional variables (25), parental incomes, occupation, status of the father and mother in their workplace, and level of education. Other specifics included asset ownership, and the availability of running water and electricity in the home. Respondents were asked whether parents have cooks, gardeners, and cleaners at home or if they carry out the household chores on their own. Respondents were also asked to indicate whether or not they join their parents in doing some of the household chores. These variables were used to classify the students into either a higher socioeconomic status (HSES) or a lower socioeconomic status (LSES). In this study, the three socioeconomic status factors were collapsed into two, high and low, based on how close to either of the two strata the parents are in terms of their incomes, educational backgrounds, and positions at work. The second section asks about the range of activities students carry out when at home. Activities listed for response include cooking, which involves boiling water, melting and freezing, evaporating, drying, making solutions; laundry, which involves drying and ironing; gardening, and so on. The third section asks students to indicate which of the 13 chemistry concepts presented they could relate with specific home activities. The concepts presented are melting point, boiling point, filtration, decantation, saturated vapor pressure, evaporation, rusting, corrosion, alloy, oxidation, reduction, condensation, and change of state. The authors hypothesized that the concepts listed and the home activities listed in the second section are somehow related, and investigated whether the students are able to establish a relationship. The third section was presented to students in the form of a checklist in which investigators verbally asked students questions and noted the relevant chemistry concepts students could relate to the home activities listed against them (Table 1). The authors

Research Questions Three key research questions are investigated: 1. To what extent are chemistry students able to establish a connection between home and school science? 2. Does any demonstrable relationship exist between students' socioeconomic status and their ability to relate home activities and chemistry concepts learned in school? 3. Do chemistry teachers make use of students' daily life examples while teaching?

Methods A survey was conducted of 200 senior secondary school two (SSII) students randomly selected from 10 senior secondary schools in Akure, Ondo State (Nigeria) who constituted the sample. Preliminary analysis showed 84 of the students were from a higher socioeconomic background and 116 from a lower socioeconomic stratum. The students in the study were drawn through simple random sampling using the class register. However, the sample was drawn from government schools and did not adequately reflect equal representation of students from both higher and lower socioeconomic status because many parents

r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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also conducted a further detailed interview with 20% of students in the sample as a follow-up to crosscheck the responses and to establish the authenticity of students' claims. However, the interview findings are not presented in the results because there was no appreciable difference between the data collected from the entire sample with the use of the guided questionnaire and checklist and those from the smaller sample interviewed. Table 1. Sample Survey Questions Relating Chemistry Topics and Boiling Water at Home

Questions Which of the following concepts can you associate with boiling water at home?

Responses: Indicate Which Concepts

Concepts boiling point; evaporation; vapor pressure; condensation

What about if you do not boiling point; cover the boiling container evaporation; vapor during boiling? pressure; condensation

In the fourth section, students were verbally asked to indicate the home examples and illustrations their teachers often referred to while teaching chemistry (Table 2). Table 2. Sample Survey Questions Concerning Real-Life Examples of Chemistry Topics in the Classroom Responses: Indicate Yes or No

Does your teacher refer to home examples when teaching you chemistry? Does your teacher use familiar explanations, such as evaporation taking place when drying substances or spreading clothes in the sun?

Validation of the Instrument The instrument was validated using a “panel of experts” (24, 26, 27) approach in establishing the content and construct validity. Two academics in the field that the instrument examined (chemistry and science education), and two chemistry teachers at the study location analyzed and evaluated the instrument. These experts made useful suggestions that the authors used in preparing the final draft of the survey. The coefficient of reliability of the instrument obtained through a test-retest method was 0.72. This involved administering the instrument twice to 30 SSII students outside the sample but within the population by the same investigators at an interval of three weeks. Although the coefficient of reliability obtained was a bit low, experts in test and measurement(28, 29) agree that 0.70 indicates a fairly strong correlation acceptable for research purposes.


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The authors wish to acknowledge the limitation and significance of the “purposive” classification into high and low socioeconomic status employed in this study. In other settings, the middle class might be the largest and the indices used here might be insufficient for classification. However, the use of them in this study was guided by the reality on the ground in the study location, Nigeria. Additionally, the research instrument sought the ability of students to associate chemical concepts with phenomena at home, especially in the kitchen. No instrument was designed and administered to test the actual ability of the students to carry out these tasks. Further research in other cultural settings and the use of observation or test can shed additional light on these questions, where other cultural variables may influence the findings and student learning behavior.

Data about the ability of students to connect chemistry concepts with home activities and the influence of socioeconomic status are presented in Table 3. The evidence here and in other parts of the report is based on what the students reported they could do. Data in columns 3 and 4 of Table 3 indicate that a large number (mean = 79.8%) of the students sampled were unable to relate chemistry concepts to home activities. The numbers of students from both groups that could and could not relate the concepts with home activities were almost the same: 20.3% students with HSES and 20.2% with LSES could, in contrast to 79.6% students from HSES and 79.8% from LSES who could not. The data in Table 4 show that a greater percentage of students felt that their teachers were not making use of home activities in teaching chemistry concepts in the school. Discussion

Does your teacher use familiar language in explaining, such as “sieve” for filter, “running off filtrate” for decantation?

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Limitation and Significance of the Methodology

Results

What about if you cover boiling point; the container and the lid is evaporation; vapor about to come off? pressure; condensation

Questions

Tables 3 and 4 report the data collected using frequency counts and percentages.

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The finding of this study revealed the inability of a significantly high percentage of students to relate chemistry concepts learned in school to home activities. This is despite the emphasis placed by school curricula on connecting science to students' everyday life experiences and focusing on everyday life applications of science in schools (30-33). Several factors might be responsible for this wide gap. A plausible one might be the pressure of testing at school, because many of the science curricula in the developing world are not only content-specific (34) but also examination-driven (35-37). This explains the tendency by teachers to drive the students along to cover the overburdened syllabus in preparation for test. In such a situation, memorization of facts may be a common study procedure at the expense of in-depth understanding (3). Students are not encouraged to see the connection between science learned in schools and the household chores they engage in at home in the framework of context-based learning. But this present study did not examine these questions in specific detail. Fechner and Sumfleth (38) noted that a large number of teachers felt that such context-based learning could distract students. They seemed to say that the content knowledge acquired by students is enough.


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In the Classroom Table 3. Comparative Ability of Students To Relate Chemistry Concepts with Home Activities and Distribution of the Socio-Economic Status of the Students' Families Able To Relate

Chemical Concepts

Unable To Relate, % (HSES, LSES)

Able To Relate, % (N: HSES, LSES)a

Unable To Relate

HSES, % (N = 84)

LSES, %(N = 116)

HSES, % (N = 84)

LSES, %(N = 116)

1

Melting point

28.0 (24, 32)

72.0 (60, 84)

28.6

27.6

71.4

72.4

2

Boiling point

23.5 (20, 27)

76.5 (64, 89)

23.8

23.2

76.2

76.7

3

Filtration

34.0 (29, 39)

66.0 (55, 77)

34.5

33.6

64.5

66.4

4

Decantation

21.5 (18, 25)

79.5 (66, 91)

21.4

21.6

78.6

78.5

5

Sat. vap. pressure

21.5 (18, 25)

79.5 (66, 91)

21.4

21.6

78.6

78.5

6

Evaporation

13.5 (11, 16)

86.5 (73, 100)

13.1

13.8

86.9

86.2

7

Rusting

9.5 (8, 11)

90.5 (76, 105)

9.5

9.5

90.5

90.5

8

Corrosion

22.5 (19, 26)

77.5 (65, 90)

22.6

22.4

77.4

77.6

9

Alloy

21.5 (18, 25)

78.5 (66, 91)

21.4

21.6

78.6

78.6

10

Oxidation

5.0 (4, 6)

95.0 (80, 110)

4.8

5.2

95.2

94.8

11

Reduction

6.0 (5, 7)

94.0 (79, 109)

6.0

6.0

94.1

94.0

12

Condensation

27.0 (23, 31)

73.0 (61, 85)

27.4

26.7

72.6

73.3

13

Change of state

30.5 (25, 35)

69.5 (59, 81)

29.8

30.2

70.2

69.8

a

HSES denotes higher socioeconomic status of the family; LSES denotes lower socioeconomic status of the family. These designations were determined based on demographic information gathered by the survey.

Table 4. Students' Reported Perceptions of Teachers' Use of Home Examples and Illustrations in Chemistry Teaching Variable from Survey Question Regarding Teacher Practices

Yes, %(N = 200)

No, % (N = 200)

References home activities

34.0

66.0

Uses familiar illustration

28.0

72.0

Uses familiar language

43.5

56.5

Teachers, too, are under constraint in that their choice of approaches is sometimes determined by availability of teaching facilities and flexibility of timetable schedule among other factors. Laboratories in many schools, particularly in the developing nations, are just there in name (39). They are devoid of facilities and equipment for routine hands-on activities. Even in wealthy nations these hands-on laboratory activities are being replaced with virtual substitutes such as computer-based simulations and video sequences (39). This, coupled with rigid timetable scheduling, means that many teachers resort to a mere theoretical approach. The National Research Council (2) has reported that students do not learn much from many laboratory activities and that the activities in many of them do not clearly connect to the rest of the class content or life outside class. If students are not exposed to purposeful hands-on activities they may not be able to relate science to real-life at home. In this study, the students' socioeconomic status tends to exert little influence on student capability, as the data in Table 3 indicate. Students from both categories showed almost similar capabilities but with a slight tilt in favor of the lower socioeconomic status, and better still for that category when students responses were placed as a percentage of the entire sample. Socioeconomic variables have been reported to be a determinant of school achievement (5, 7, 40). However, indices for categorization into the strata differ from one nation to another (12, 41). That is also true for children's engagement in chores. In the study


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location in Nigeria, children in LSES families are typically more likely to help their parents in the kitchen, market, and garden. By contrast, many parents in HSES families do not involve their children with chores (42). Nonetheless, it has been reported that engaging in chores is also a potential source for children's learning (43). On the basis of this submission, one would expect that students who for one reason or the other are being engaged in chores should not only learn while doing them but should be able to transfer such learning to consolidate school science. Yet the findings in this study suggest there was little learning and transfer in the sphere of chemical knowledge taught in school. Reasons for this may include the reported lack of parental assistance (44-46) and parental lack of proficiency in science (13, 47). Parental involvement is a vital ingredient in a child's education and science (48, 49). According to Sijuade (40) and Holmes (48), students with involved parents no matter what their income and background are more likely to earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level programs. However, many parents, especially those with LSES, and with several children as is manifest in this study location, see the children as sources of additional income. They also do not have the time to assist their children with homework assignments, let alone helping them learn from chores. The situation might be different with better results if parents could render useful assistance and if the teachers would build the bridge to their home life by using examples of students' daily life experience in the classroom lessons. As noted, Campbell and Lubben (31) identified a number of ways of linking science to everyday life anchored in Deweyan notions of experiential education (18, 19). From the results in Table 4, a greater percentage of students felt that their teachers were not making use of home activities in teaching chemistry concepts in the school. This might account for low capability in connecting school knowledge and home experience as reflected in responses by students from both socioeconomic categories. Moreover, many teachers may fear that context-based learning could distract students from content


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important for their examinations (38). Lee and Fraser (36) reported that science teachers usually do not value laboratory activities through which practical connections to everyday life could easily be established because they feel this takes time away from teaching to cover the prescribed examination-driven curriculum. Conclusion and Recommendations The data make clear that a substantial number of chemistry students could not establish a bridge between school science and relevant phenomena in their home experience in spite of daily exposure to both. Moreover, students overwhelmingly felt that teachers were not constructing that bridge. The study equally suggests that the socioeconomic status of students had little influence on their ability to relate school science to real-world life. Though students from lower socioeconomic stratum were more frequently engaged in household chores, they did not do much transfer of chemistry learned at school in applying this to phenomena in the home. It is possible that this category of students distracted in a way from concentrating on school work by their numerous home-based chores could find compensation in learning from chores if the parents were ready and proficient enough in science to help them, and if the teachers would use these home examples in school lessons. This study of the extent to which science education at school integrates with community life outside the school has implication for science teachers, textbook authors, teacher trainers, and curriculum planners. It is important to note that a solid and deep understanding of science and in particular chemistry is important as a foundation for university studies. If students acquire a surface learning of concepts as often occurs in regimented, transmissive classrooms, then their capacity to apply their knowledge to everyday problems is restricted. Seeing the relevance of chemistry in everyday applications raises awareness of the value of science, provides students with multiple experiences of science and chemistry, and should enable them to go beyond the surface features of phenomena to see and understand key ideas in chemistry. A broad array of home activities can provide a source for the meaningful, experiential-based teaching and learning and in-depth understanding of science concepts. Parents who engage their children in required household chores could be guided to assist them in learning from chores. Teachers should not only use students' home experiences to consolidate learning in school, they ought to be trained on how better to use them in such a way that students will clearly see the connections between the two experiences. Literature Cited 1. Bybee, R. W. In Learning Science and the Science of Learning; Bybee, R. W., Ed.; NSTA Press: Arlington, VA, 2002; pp 25-35. 2. National Research Council. In America's Lab Report: Investigation in High School Science; Singfer, S. R., Hilton, M. I., Schweingruber, H. A., Eds.; The National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2002. 3. Djallo, A. B. Education for Today: Science Education in Danger. The Newsletter of UNESCO's Education Sector 2004, 11 (October-December), 1. 4. Osborne, J. Eurasia J. Math. Sci. Tech. Educ. 2007, 3 (3), 173–184. 5. Bugenta, D. B.; Johnston, C. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2000, 51, 315–344.

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