Abstract
Our lives are increasingly influenced by science. Global challenges like climate change, disease, and agriculture all rely on the public making informed decisions through engagement with scientific practice and information. Unfortunately, there is a growing disillusionment with science, which can be initiated early in life depending on the quality of school science experiences. Decades of international evidence has found that students become less engaged with science as they progress from primary to secondary schooling. Little has been done to examine or address these trends in the context of science education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Engagement in science has been related to positive student outcomes in learning and life, highlighting an urgent need to propose interventions to tackle the decline. Hooking students’ situational interest or switching on their established interests are credible strategies for establishing engagement. Student generated digital media offers a strategy to hook adolescent students’ existing technological and social interests in order to switch-on their engagement with science.
This doctoral research investigated the current state of student engagement with science and analyses the impact of student generated mobile filmmaking on science engagement in the middle years classrooms in New Zealand (Years 7-10, ages 11-15). A two-phase explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach was taken to address the research questions. An initial quantitative survey (Phase I) informed the development, implementation, and qualitative analysis of a mobile filmmaking science class activity aimed at improving student engagement with science (Phase II). The research is presented in the style of a thesis with publications, spread across three manuscripts.
Survey results (Phase I, n=429 students) indicated that the characteristic ‘decline’ in science engagement over the early adolescent years was only evident when asked specifically asked about school science. When asked about science outside of school or in their future study or career, older students were more engaged with science than younger students. Interventions which are contextualised and relevant to students’ everyday lives and futures will be more effective in improving engagement with science.
The Science Video Project (Phase II, n=4 classes) aimed to appeal to students’ existing interests in technology and group-related activities relevant to everyday life such as video-production for social media as a way to improve their engagement in science. Case study data from teacher interviews, student group interviews, questionnaires, and observations found that mobile filmmaking greatly improved student engagement with science compared to typical class activities, especially improving students’ emotional engagement. Mobile filmmaking also gave teachers the opportunity to achieve cross- curricular learning in literacy, digital technologies, and personal developmental skills. Furthermore, the students’ high digital literacy with filmmaking on mobile devices allowed educators to overcome concerns about using devices in the science classroom.
Taken together, this research finds that making students the science communicators through mobile filmmaking is an effective and easy way to improve science engagement in middle years classrooms. With this established, future research is encouraged to measure (i) the associated learning outcomes for mobile filmmaking, and (ii) longitudinal effects of repeated opportunities to create mobile films.