Assessment of Scientific Literacy of Estonian Gymnasium Students during the Operation of a Competence-based Science Curriculum

Autor: Miia Rannikmäe, Aveliis Post, Anne Laius
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Zdroj: Universal Journal of Educational Research. 4:1142-1147
ISSN: 2332-3213
2332-3205
DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040525
Popis: Sustainable societies need a workforce with a very creative and flexible nature to be able cope with rapidly changing situations making creative and reasonable decisions. The only suggested way to obtain this is through education that is oriented to competences. The goal of this research is to determine the influence of a new competence-based science curriculum on gymnasium students' scientific creativity skills and socio-scientific reasoning in the context of studying lactose intolerance. In order to investigate the development of these skills at the gymnasium level, a scientific literacy test is administered to 1116 10th grade students (16 –17 year old) and 802 12th grade students (17–18 year old), totally 1918 students in. 44 randomly selected schools from different regions of Estonia, both urban and rural, to the scientific literacy test on a new Estonian competence-based curriculum is conducted in the fall of 2011 with the 10th grade students and the test is repeated with the same students in the spring of 2013 before they graduated 12th grade. The data are gathered with an 8-item test assessing students' scientific literacy components including scientific creativity and socio-scientific reasoning. The test situation is initiated by a scenario describing an expected visit of a family (mother and triplets) and their food provision problems, which arise because the mother and one of the boys suffered from lactose intolerance. One of the tasks is designed to measure scientific creativity skills and one task to assess socio-scientific reasoning skills. Responses are scored from 0 – 3 points per task. The results of the study show that the new competence-based science curriculum has not yet affected significantly the students' learning outcomes in enhancing competences associated with scientific creativity and socio-scientific reasoning skills. Studies during gymnasium level have not supported the students' ability to transfer biological and chemical knowledge into everyday situation effectively.
Databáze: OpenAIRE