 |
Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 1, Article 8 (Jun., 2011) |
The participants included 36 second-year pre-service teachers who were enrolled in the Department of Elementary Mathematics Education (EME) in Dokuz Eylül University (Dokuz Eylül University or DEU is a Turkish medium university) in Izmir. Students were randomly divided into two groups and assigned as section A and B. Physics is compulsory in this department, and it is offered in two successive semesters (fall and spring) as Physics I (4 credits) and Physics II (4 credits). Physics I mainly focuses on mechanics concepts and Physics II focuses on electricity and magnetism. The distribution of participants according to gender and groups is presented in Table 1.
Table 1. The distribution of participants according to gender and groups
Gender
Summarizing Group
Control Group
Total
n
%
n
%
Male
7
38.9
8
44.4
15
Female
11
61.1
10
55.6
21
Total
18
50.0
18
50.0
36
Note: n: number of participants in groups; %: percentage of participants in groups
In this study, a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental method with equivalent control group was used. There was one control and one experimental group, namely, the summarizing group. Students were assigned randomly to the summarizing and control groups. The summarizing group received strategy plus traditional instruction; however, the control group received only traditional instruction. Both groups were tested before and after the intervention to measure their conceptual learning in electricity and magnetism, and learning satisfaction. Control variables were prior conceptual learning in electricity and magnetism, and learning satisfaction. The independent variable was the intervention (the strategy and/or the traditional instruction). The dependent variables were post-test conceptual learning in electricity and magnetism, and learning satisfaction.
The data of this study was collected by a Conceptual Learning Open-Ended Test (CLOET), and a Student Satisfaction Scale (SSS).
Conceptual Learning Open-Ended Test (CLOET): CLOET is an open-ended test designed to determine the level of students' conceptual learning in electricity and magnetism. When designing this test, the researcher selected ten questions requiring short answers from the book PHYSICS for Scientists and Engineers (Serway & Beichner, 2000) for the subjects of electricity (electric field, Gauss's Law, electric potential, capacity and dielectric, current and resistance, d.c. circuit) and magnetism (magnetic field, magnetic force, Biot-Savart Law, Ampere's Law, magnetic flux). She took three experts' opinions on the validity of the test and whether it, in parallel with the teaching objectives, could be used for setting conceptual learning or not. The sample questions are all given in Appendix 1. The students were asked to make detailed oral explanations using the fundamental laws of physics, make the necessary drawings, and write the formulas clearly when answering the questions. They were allocated 40 minutes to answer the questions. The answer given to each question has been graded according to the rubric presented in Table 2.
Table 2. Rubric for Grading the CLOET
Answer Criteria
Point
Criteria Definition
Correct answer
10
Giving an explanation that is correct in physics,
drawing the right figures and writing the correct formulas
Partially-correct answer
5
Giving insufficient explanation, figures and formulas
Incorrect answer/
No response
0
Giving incorrect explanation, figures and formulas
No answer
According to the CLOET Assessment Scale, the maximum score that one can get from the conceptual test is 100, and the minimum score is 0.
In order to determine the validity of the evaluation of the CLOET test, the researcher graded the students' papers twice with intervals of three weeks; and the Pearson' correlation coefficient between the scores was calculated as 0.88.
The Student Satisfaction Scale: Students' learning satisfaction towards learning physics was measured using the Student Satisfaction Scale (SSS) developed by Sezgin Selçuk and Çaliskan (2010a). This scale containing 5-choice Likert type items having choices of "Totally Agree", "Agree", "Undecided", "Disagree", and "Totally Disagree" consists of a total of 26 items. Satisfaction items are scored using values ranging from 5 (Totally Agree) to 1 (Totally Disagree). Negative items are inversely coded. Items in the scale are grouped in 3 dimensions and can explain 49.30% of total variability. The names of the dimensions are as follows: Enjoyment in Learning (EL), Quality of Teaching (QT), and Teaching Activities (TA). Descriptions and sample items concerning sub-scales of SSS are given in Table 3.
Table 3. Descriptions and sample items concerning sub-scales of student satisfaction scale
Descriptions Sample Items Satisfaction with the course itself.
“I don’t want the course to end”
“We are having lots of fun during classes”
QT
Satisfaction with the quality and adequacy of teaching.
“I always receive an answer to my questions in classes”
“I think that what we cover in classes is sufficient”
TA
Satisfaction with the teaching and learning activities conducted in classes.
“Our teachers are always teaching us theories, we never practice”
“Our teachers do not encourage us to participate in classes”
Item analysis of the SSS resulted in a 26-item scale with a coefficient of 0.92 (Cronbach's Alpha), indicating an excellent level of reliability. Of the 26 items, 14 items were positive and 12 were negative. The highest score which can be obtained from this scale is 130, and the lowest score is 26 (for rating 5 to 1 all twenty-six items). In Table 4, the number of items for each sub scale calculated using Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficients are presented.
Table 4. Results of the reliability calculations concerning the student satisfaction scale
Sub-scales
Number of items
Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient
Sub-scale 1
EL
14
0.92
Sub-scale 2
QT
7
0.80
Sub-scale 3
TA
5
0.67
Whole Scale
26
0.92
Intervention Materials: The Turkish translation of the textbook Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics 2 by Serway and Beichner, 5th edition (2000) was used as the textbook in both groups. During the instruction process, scripts which contain information about summarizing strategies and work sheets (i.e. used to write summaries) developed by the researcher were used in summarizing groups. A sample sheet for summarizing strategy is presented in Appendix 2.
The experimental processes were conducted in four classes per week of General Physics II. The intervention took place over six weeks (24 classes) in total in March and May in the Spring Semester of the 2009-2010 academic year. During the first week of the semester, before the experimental processes, the pre-tests measures of conceptual learning, and learning satisfaction towards physics were collected and during the second week, the summarizing strategies training program was applied to the strategy training group during 2 lecture hours (a total of 180 minutes). During the intervention, the summarizing group received explicit summarizing strategies plus traditional instruction in a whole-class format, while those in the control group received only traditional instruction in a whole-class format. Strategy instruction in the summarizing group composed of two training phases called strategy acquisition and strategy application as used in Montague and Bos (1986). In the first 90 minutes of the class, the researcher taught Coulomb's Law both to the summarizing and control group with a traditional method. In the second 90 minutes of the class, the researcher used "strategy acquisition" and "strategy use" methods when working with students. In the control group, during the same class hour, the students revised the subject matter and they solved some example problems. In terms of content, both groups were in parallel to each other. Posttest measures of conceptual learning, and learning satisfaction towards physics were collected at the end of the treatment period, that is, at the beginning of the ninth week.
Treatment in the summarizing group
The summarizing group was taught the strategies in two consecutive class hours. In the first 90 minutes of the first class of the week, using traditional methods, the researcher taught Coulomb's Law. The activities carried out during strategy-teaching in the second 90 minutes are given below:
1) The students were introduced to summarizing strategies.
2) The researcher explained the purpose and importance of summarizing and how and where it would be used.
3) When summarizing, the students were encouraged to use The Rule-Based Summarizing Strategy, which was developed by Brown, Campione and Day (Maher, 2000). When using this strategy, students have to follow some rules.
The following steps of The Rule-Based Summarizing process were explained to the students:
a) to detach the unnecessary information,
b) to throw away the excess material,
c) to replace special concepts with more general concepts in the material (e.g., dielectrics for mica, quartz, and plastic), and
d) to choose a title for the summary.
4) The students were presented some examples about summarizing.
5) In order to enable the students to practice summarizing, they were invited to go over Coulomb's Law again and summarize the subject in accordance with the rules for summarizing.
6) The researcher examined the students' summaries immediately and gave them feedback.
Strategy application training was started in the third week of the semester and was embedded into the content of traditional instruction. Approximately 60 minutes of class time each week was used for presentation and the remaining time was left for individual summarizing activities. After the presentation, a "Summarizing Sheet" was distributed to students and they were asked to review the learning material and write a summary of the lecture by using graphic organizer(s). The Summarizing Sheets were collected at the end of the class. Student sheets were reviewed by the researcher and the first 10 minutes of the next class was reserved for the evaluation of these activities. Deficiencies and mistakes (if any) in the summarizing sheets were discussed during student-researcher dialogues. The remaining part of the class was left for traditional problem solving activities.
Treatment in the control group
While strategy instruction was applied in the summarizing group, no study relating to strategy instruction was carried out in the control group. During this period, conventional teaching methods were used concerning "Coulomb's Law" the same topic covered in the strategy group training program. In the control group, the subject of that day was instructed by the researcher using a direct lecturing method for the first 90 minutes of the time allotted in the course schedule. After the instruction of the lecture was completed, similar sample problems solved by the strategy group were solved by the researcher on the board for the students in the control group using traditional problem solving approaches. To enable both groups to catch up with each other in terms of syllabus, whenever the control group covered that day's material, they were asked to revise that teaching material such as the subject matter and example problem solutions.
The data obtained from CLOET, and SSS have been analyzed using the SPSS 13.0 statistical analysis program. Frequencies (n), percentages (%), means (M), medians (MD) and standard deviations (SD) were calculated.
We cannot assume that the dependent variables had normal distribution due to the small number of the sample in each group: n1 and n2<20. Hence, non-parametric tests were required to be used during the analysis of the data (Pett, 1997). The non-parametric statistical methods, the Mann-Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test, were conducted. We used an alpha level of 0.05 for all of the statistical tests.
