High School Students' Attitudes and Beliefs on ... - ACS Publications

Research: Science and Education

High School Students' Attitudes and Beliefs on Using the Science Writing Heuristic in an Advanced Placement Chemistry Class Alice Putti Science Department, Jenison High School, Jenison, Michigan 49428 United States [email protected]

A 2001 study conducted by the AP Chemistry Development committee showed advanced placement (AP) chemistry students' content knowledge compared favorably to their college counterparts on common exam questions (1). Though AP chemistry students' chemistry knowledge seemed to be equivalent to the college experience, their laboratory experience was not. For years, many AP programs across the country did not offer a laboratory program. If one was offered, the experiments were verification and lacked critical thinking. The authors of America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science called for students to engage in inquiry experiences requiring critical thinking and data analysis (2). In response to these recommendations, College Board is evaluating the laboratory component of the AP chemistry curriculum. In 2006, College Board audited AP programs and certified only those demonstrating they covered the minimum required curriculum, including laboratory experiments. Prior to this audit process, the laboratory experience was a recommended yet not required part of the curriculum. Currently, the AP chemistry curriculum is undergoing a “redesign” with a focus on inquiry lab experiences (3). The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) is an instructional method designed to promote inquiry learning and critical thinking (4). In this study, the SWH was used in an effort to improve student understanding of the underlying chemistry concepts behind the laboratory experiments in an AP chemistry class. The research question focused on student attitudes and beliefs about using the SWH. What Are Attitudes and Beliefs? For years, educators have known that student attitudes and beliefs can have an impact on science learning. Much research has been done on student attitude and achievement in science (5, 6). In each case, a different definition of attitude has been developed (5-7). Researchers have also pursued many investigations into understanding high school students' attitudes toward chemistry (8) and how attitudes can affect behaviors and learning. In this study, attitude is defined as a positive or negative feeling about something (9). Student attitudes are highly dependent on their beliefs. Whereas attitudes are an evaluation (positive or negative), Fishbein and Ajzen state student beliefs associate some characteristic with an object (10). A student's attitude may indicate that he does not like chemistry; this may be due to his belief that chemistry involves a lot of math. If a student dislikes math, then this connection between math and chemistry would lead to a negative attitude. In contrast, another student may like math and feel that the connection between math and 516

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science is a positive one. Students' positive attitudes and beliefs about learning chemistry can improve their effort and, ultimately, their achievement. Educators once thought student attitudes toward science would improve (become more positive) as they learned more facts and data (9). Teachers use different methods to engage and interest their students; for example, using laboratory experiments and demonstrations. Although labs provide hands-on and firsthand experiences of chemical phenomena, many times students complete laboratory experiments without understanding the underlying purpose or concepts. It is crucial to help students realize the importance of why they are doing an experiment and help them tie it to their previous learning. Incorporating the Science Writing Heuristic in a High School AP Chemistry Course Rationale The Science Writing Heuristic is an alternative method of writing lab reports. The method promotes student participation in developing a research question and carrying out a scientific investigation. Unlike traditional lab reports, the SWH encourages students to actively participate in their learning, reflect on their learning, and tie it back to the underlying chemistry concepts (4, 11, 12). This approach involves redesigning laboratory reports so students are required to link previous knowledge with new content (see Table 1). Traditional verification lab formats just require students to fill in isolated pieces of data, which often results in students' failure to comprehend what the data mean. The traditional lab report requires students to do more writing, but it does not necessarily require them to make connections between their lab experiments and underlying chemistry concepts. The inquiry experiments force students to think during the experiment, but most inquiry labs focus on the “process of science” and are not content driven. As a result, inquiry labs do not necessarily stress the chemistry concepts behind the experiment. By requiring students to connect and write all parts of the report, SWH may help students make better connections with the lecture and lab materials (14). Through SWH lab reports, students engage in higher-order thinking skills (analysis and synthesis) to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts(14). Demographics The study was conducted at a Midwest suburban high school in Michigan. The district is in a middle-class community with one public high school of 1600 students. The 24 participants

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Vol. 88 No. 4 April 2011 pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc r 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. 10.1021/ed100135w Published on Web 02/01/2011

Research: Science and Education Table 1. The Science Writing Heuristic Templatea Instructor Template

Student Template

1. Exploration of preinstructional understanding

A. Beginning questions or ideas

2. Prelaboratory activities

B. Tests and procedures

3. Laboratory activities

C. Observations

4. Negotiation;individual writing

D. Claims

5. Negotiation;group discussion

E. Evidence

6. Negotiation;textbooks and other resources

F. Reading

7. Negotiation;individual writing

G. Reflection

8. Exploration of postinstructional understanding a

Table adapted from figures in ref 13.

Table 2. Lab Report Components and Directions Components

Directions Prelab: Must be completed by the day of the prelab discussion.

Beginning Question

What do I want to know about ____________?” or “How does ____________ relate to or depend on ____________?”

Safety Considerations

List what safety concerns should be considered when working with specific chemicals, equipment or procedures in the laboratory.

Procedure: Two Possible Approaches

If procedure is given: It must be done in picture form when you come to class on the day of the prelab. If no procedure is given: List the steps you took to answer your questions. For many experiments, this section will be defined in part by the class.

Lab Report Observations, Data Table, List all data, observations and measurements made during the experiment. Include class data from and Calculations the prelab discussion. Show the formulas used and the meanings of symbols used, if not standard. Make sure to include the units on all measurements to the correct number of significant figures. Show the calculations in order, as used in the experiment. Claims

Make a statement that links the observations back to the original question. The statement helps you figure out what the lab actually means. Do not just repeat an observation. Claims are statements like “This happens because ______.” Or “I believe ______ because ______.”

Evidence

Write an explanation to support your claim(s). Refer to specific pieces of your own data, class data or both to explain your claim. This section answers the questions “How do I know?” or “Why am I making these claims?” This section shows evidence to support the “because” part of the claim.

Reading and Reflection

This section is meant to help you understand your results and interpretations of the activity in the context of the class data/information. The following questions should be addressed in this section.

• What is the concept(s) learned or applied in this experiment? • How does your groups work compare with other groups? The whole class? • What is a possible source of error in this experiment? How was the final result affected by this source • • • •

of error (increase or decrease)? Explain your reasoning. How does this compare to the information in your textbook or class notes? If predictions were made, were your predictions correct? Why or why not? What might be some real world applications related to this work? How have your ideas changed, what new questions do you have or what new things do you have to think about?

Reflection Questions

are from an AP chemistry class consisting of 17 juniors and 7 seniors. AP chemistry at this school is a second-year chemistry class. The class meets 5 days a week for 60 min. Conventionally, the SWH is conducted in a 4-h block in which students complete the prelab discussion, procedure, and postlab discussion in the same class period. The version of SWH (Table 2) used in this study has been modified to accommodate a high school AP

r 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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chemistry class that meets every day for 60 min. The SWH is conducted during three different class periods and divided accordingly: prelab discussion, experimental procedure, and postlab discussion. Prior to the study, students were unfamiliar with the SWH. At the beginning of the school year, students were told they were part of a graduate research project focusing on the laboratory portion of the class. They were not given

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Research: Science and Education Table 3. Experiments and Corresponding Instructional Elements Instructional Elements Incorporated Prelab Discussion

Lab Experiments in Chronological Order

Claims and Evidence

Reading and Reflection

Postlab Discussion

Variables in a science experiment

X

X

X

X

Percentage of water in a hydrate

X

X

X

X

Acid-base microscale titration

X

X

X

Molar mass of a volatile liquid

X

X

X

X

X

Heat of fusion of water Hess's law;Determine heat of combustion of Mg Using Beer's law to determine the concentration of nickel(II) nitrate

X

X

X

Kinetics of a bleach and green water solution

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

Redox titration

X

X

Electroplating copper onto a key

X

X

Determining a reduction potential chart

X

X

Molar mass of a solid using freezing point depression

X

X

Molar mass of a diprotic acid KSP of calcium hydroxide

X

Table 4. SWH Attitude Survey Statements for Student Response Item

Statements

1.

Completing the lab reports increased my understanding of the concepts in the chapter.

2.

The prelab discussion helped my understanding of the experiments (prelab questions, data table design).

3.

I would have understood the lab better with a prelab discussion (prelab questions, data table design).

4.

I preferred laboratories experiments that did not have a prelab discussion.

5.

I would understand this lab (as well) without doing the prelab assignment.

6.

Doing the prelab assignment forced me to think about the experiment before attempting the lab.

7.

I find it helpful to compare my results to the results of the other lab groups (class data and discussion).

8.

The reading and reflection part of the lab report helps me to tie what we've learned in lecture to the lab experiment.

specific information about the SWH nor were they told that this was a new method of writing lab reports. Integrating SWH Elements in the Course Prior to the lab activity, students pose a research question and research safety concerns as prelab activities. On the day of the prelab discussion, students write their questions on the board and chose one class investigation question for the experiment. They also design a data table and sign up for their experiments or tests (20-30 min of class time). A student in the class facilitates this prelab discussion. On the day of the experiment, students make observations and run tests in order to gather data (1-2 class periods). Either students or teachers can generate procedures for the experiments, depending on the complexity of the experiment. An example of the teacher-generated procedure and samples of students' beginning questions can be found in the online supporting information. The following day, students post their data online using an electronic classroom such as Moodle so that conclusions can be drawn based on the class's data. During a teacher-facilitated prelab discussion, possible trends in the data are discussed and questions regarding calculations are addressed (20-30 min of class time). From their group and class data, students make a claim and answer the question: “Based on my 518


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observations what am I trying to claim?” Next, students must use evidence to justify each of their claims, analyze their data, and finally reflect on their learning. It is the final steps (claims and evidence, and reflections) that help students improve their understanding of the chemistry concepts involved in lab experiments. The claims and evidence section requires students to interpret data and graphs and use this information to justify their claims. It also requires students to analyze what they have learned and articulate their ideas in writing to their teacher, deepening their understanding of the experiment (14). Finally, by encouraging students to reflect on their experiences, students practice higher-order cognitive skills such as evaluation and reflection (4). Throughout the year, students used all or parts of the SWH for 13 lab reports. The parts of the SWH used in each experiment over the course of the school year are listed in Table 3. A grading rubric, a (teacher-generated) sample lab report, a procedure for a hydrate lab, and a description of the prelab and postlab discussion are available as online supporting information. Surveying Students To Assess Their Attitudes and Beliefs about Using the SWH As previously mentioned, students knew they were part of a study on AP chemistry students and laboratory experiments.


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Research: Science and Education Table 5. SWH Attitude Survey Student Response Data by Lab Experiment

However, they did not know that the SWH in an AP chemistry class was the focus of the study. Student data were collected through analysis of laboratory notebooks and attitude surveys. Attitude surveys (using a Likert-type scale) were completed after four lab experiments: molar mass of a diprotic acid; KSP of calcium hydroxide; redox titration; and molar mass by freezing point depression. Survey questions (Table 4) were reviewed by high school chemistry teachers and college professors prior to being administered. For each survey, students were asked questions about the prelab, lab, and postlab. All surveys were handed in at the same time as the corresponding lab reports. Students did not know their report grades before completing the surveys. The first survey was completed after the diprotic acid lab. Because this survey was given halfway through the year, it asked the students to reflect on their lab experiences for the first semester. The next two surveys were given directly after completing the lab (KSP and redox titration) and asked about these labs specifically. The final survey (after freezing point depression) asked students to reflect on their lab experiences for the whole year. Survey results were


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compiled by the author; data analysis was done by the author and a university professor. Items on the Likert-type survey are listed in Table 4. For each question, students could make four possible responses: strongly agree (SA); agree (A); disagree (D); strongly disagree (SD). If no response were given to an item, then it was recorded as NR, or no response. Student responses were then combined into three categories: strongly agree and agree (SA þ A); disagree and strongly disagree (D þ SD); and no response (NR). (The NR data points were generally owing to missing lab reports and missing surveys.) Results for the survey items administered after each of the four labs are reported in Table 5. Discussion Several items on the survey yielded interesting results. In Item 1, when asked to indicate whether completing their lab reports helped their conceptual understanding, students overwhelmingly agreed. However, looking at the data from Item 1, not all students found that the experiments improved their


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conceptual understanding. This may be related to the lab concept itself or the requirements for the report (calculations, questions, etc.). Students often have difficulty with KSP concepts and the SWH may force students to recognize what they did not understand. Because this is a microscale experiment, there is often a high degree of error in determining the KSP of calcium hydroxide, with a wide range of reported KSP values. This may also contribute to the students' confusion. The diprotic acid and redox titration are traditional titration experiments with burets. Because students have previous experience with titrations, they are generally very confident in their skills. This may explain the low disagreement percentage for Item 1 observed for these two experiments. As can be seen from Table 5, students felt more comfortable with experiments that had prelab discussion (Items 2-6). Item 2 shows that students recognized that the prelab assignments contributed to their understanding of the experiment. Responses to Item 6 indicate that the prelab discussion forced students to think about the lab before doing it (80% of students agreed or strongly agreed). This is important because it suggests that students are actively engaged in their learning, a goal of SWH and education in general. Averaging the data for the four experiments on Item 5, 31% of students felt they would have understood the lab as well without a prelab assignment. Looking at Item 3, students felt most confident about the redox titration (54% felt they did not need the prelab discussion). This again may be due to students' familiarity with titration experiments. The KSP responses to Item 5 seem to contradict those to Item 1. Students felt they did not need the prelab discussion but felt the least confident about their conceptual understanding of the KSP experiment. Again, because KSP is a conceptually difficult topic, students may have felt that the laboratory procedure was easy to follow, yet they did not really understand the experiment. In general, students indicated that the prelab discussion (Item 7) helped their understanding. The prelab discussion offered students an opportunity to compare their data with their peers and suggest possible sources of error for the experiment. This was the final opportunity for students to answer questions in a class setting before writing their reports. Responses to the final item indicate that 63% of students found the reading and reflection helped tie the laboratory experiment to lecture concepts. Though Item 8 was asked only after the freezing point depression lab, the survey asked students to summarize their thoughts of all the experiments. On the basis of student comments, the reading and reflection is the section students least enjoyed completing on the SWH. This section requires identification of a source of error and an explanation of its effect on the results. This is a difficult skill for students and requires a deep understanding of lab. After analysis of the notebooks, it became clear that at the beginning of the school year most students were unable to come up with a reasonable source of error for the experiments. Common explanations of error at this point in time included statements about calculation errors, broken balances, or human error. If reasonable sources of error were given, most students still could not explain its impact on the final results. However, by the end of the school year, students' skills improved, and they were able to articulate reasonable sources of error and their relationship to results. For example, when determining the molar mass of a solid using freezing depression, students recognized a possible source of error is stopping the experiment before the solution becomes completely frozen. More importantly, most students could explain 520


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that stopping the reaction early would result in a larger molar mass than expected. After just one year, it is clear that the Science Writing Heuristic has made an impact on students' learning in this course. As the year progressed, students developed better beginning questions (prelab assignment), showed more confidence in their lab skills, and improved writing in their reports. For example, in September, students study hydrates and determine the percentage of water in a hydrate and the formula for that. At this time, students' individual beginning questions are “What is a hydrate?”, “What color is the hydrate?”. Later that same year when studying the rate of a reaction between bleach and green water, students questions are much improved: “How does the concentration of bleach affect the rate of the reaction between bleach and water?”; “What effect does bleach have on the rate of the reaction?”. Throughout the year, the students' beginning question became more complex and focused on a research question for the laboratory experiment. On the 2008 AP chemistry test, the laboratory question (with calculations) covered the topic of hydrates. Upon finishing the AP test, my students were excited about the question and felt well prepared for it, even though the experiment had been done the previous September, seven months before the exam. Conclusions The Science Writing Heuristic is an alternative process to traditional lab reporting. This study done in an AP chemistry class considers student attitudes and beliefs about the SWH and the students' learning. Survey results indicate that students believed that the SWH improved their conceptual understanding of the experiments. Data show that students preferred experiments with prelab and postlab discussions. The data also show that students believed they understood these experiments better than those without the discussion. In addition, completing the reading and reflection section helped students make connections between the lab report and previous knowledge. Overall, students indicated that the SWH had a positive impact on their chemistry learning. The study shows that students' beliefs regarding SWH were supportive of the process and this was evident in the positive attitude witnessed in class. The students believed that SWH was helpful to their understanding of chemistry concepts and the experiments. As the teacher, I witnessed the students' active participation in the prelab and postlab discussion, which seemed to help the students focus during the experiment. The SWH has helped make the laboratory component of this AP chemistry course richer and more effective as a tool for student understanding. Since the initial study, the SWH continues to be used in this AP chemistry course. Data on student attitudes are still being collected using the same Likert-type surveys. In the future, the author would like to conduct a new study focusing on the impact of the SWH on student learning. Preliminary results suggest that the SWH should increase student achievement by improving students' understanding of the underlying laboratory concepts. Acknowledgment Special thanks to Deborah Herrington, Ellen Yezierski, Julie Henderleiter, Thomas Greenbowe, Kathy Burke, and the Target Inquiry program at Grand Valley State University.


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Literature Cited 1. Zipp, A. P. College Board AP Central Web Site: What Does a College Professor Expect from an AP Chemistry Course? 2002. http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/teachers_ corner/155053.html?type=print (accessed Jan 2011). 2. Singer, S. R.; Hilton, M. L.; Schweingruber, H. A. America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 2005. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php? record_id=11311 (accessed Jan 2011). 3. National Science Foundation. NSF Awards $1.8 Million to Study High-School Advanced Placement Work in Math and Science. 2006. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=106929 (accessed Jan 2011). 4. Rudd, J.; Greenbowe, T. J.; Hand, B.; Legg, M. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 1680–1686. 5. Shrigley, R. L.; Koballa, T. R.; Simpson, R. D. J. Res. Sci. Teach. 1988, 25, 659–678. 6. Mallow, J. V.; Greenburg, S. L. Phys. Teach. 1983, 21, 95–99.


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7. Gardner, P. L. Stud. Sci. Educ. 1975, 2, 1–41. 8. Salta, K.; Tzougraki, C. Sci. Educ. 2004, 88, 535–547. 9. Koballa, T. R.; Crawley, F. E. School Sci Math. 1985, 85, 222–232. 10. Koballa, T. R. Sci. Educ. 1988, 72, 116–125. 11. Burke, K. A.; Poock, J. R.; Greenbowe, T. J.; Hand, B. M. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 2005, 35, 36–41. 12. Poock, J. R.; Burke, K. A.; Greenbowe, T. J.; Hand, B. M. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 1371–1379. 13. Keys, C. W.; Hand, B. M.; Prain, V.; Collins, S. J. Res. Sci. Teach. 1999, 36, 1065–1084. 14. Burke, K. A.; Greenbowe, T. J.; Hand, B. M. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 1032–1038.

Supporting Information Available Grading rubric; sample lab report (teacher generated); procedure for a hydrate lab; description of the prelab and postlab discussion. This material is available via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.


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High School Students' Attitudes and Beliefs on ... - ACS Publications

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