Effect of science and engineering practices in biology on students attitudes, achievement and engineering design skills -

Abstract

Inquiry has long been used to promote students’ conceptual understanding and meaningful construction of scientific knowledge. A number of researchers, however, claim that inquiry has its problems and does not always enhance students’ attitudes and achievement in science (Alfieri et al., 2011). Moreover, inquiry teaching does not improve the learning for all students consistently. They also claim that there is no agreed upon definition of inquiry resulting in ineffective implementation of inquiry in science classrooms (Yager, 2012). In response to the above controversy, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (2013) suggested that the implementation of science and engineering practices provides a better context to implement inquiry-type activities because these practices provide more explicit tools to implement meaningful and inquiry-oriented science activities which improve science learning. Schimdt (2014) has shown that the use of science practices provides an authentic approach to engage students in real-world science and reveal their misconceptions. A study conducted by Ercan and Sahin (2015) have also shown that the use of science and engineering practices improves students’ achievement and attitudes towards science. Similarly, Cunningham and Carslen (2017) indicated that engineering design practices can improve children’s understandings of scientific concepts and design skills. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of using science and engineering practices in biology on students' achievement and attitudes toward biology. Hence, the study investigated the following questions: (a) What are the effects of implementing scientific and engineering practices as compared to structured inquiry on eighth grade students’ achievement in cellular biology? (b) What are the effects of implementing scientific and engineering practices as compared to structured inquiry on eighth grade students’ attitudes toward biology? (c) What are the effects of im