Longitudinal Study of Student Attitudes in a Biology Program
| Autor: | Malin J. Hansen, Gülnur Birol |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Positive shift
Longitudinal study Personal interest Teaching Articles Academic achievement General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Memorization Education Attitude ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION Mathematics education Humans Attitude change Curriculum Educational Measurement Longitudinal Studies Students Psychology Biology Cumulative grade point average Demography |
| Zdroj: | CBE Life Sciences Education |
| ISSN: | 1931-7913 |
| DOI: | 10.1187/cbe.13-06-0124 |
| Popis: | This study is among the first to report longitudinal results of student attitudes across a university program. Biology students become significantly more expert‐like from the first year to the fourth year of the program, but students are still far from expert‐like for problem solving–related attitudes. Also, after four years, high‐performing students displayed significantly more expert-like attitudes than low‐performing students. This is among the first longitudinal studies to report student attitudes across 4 yr of a university program. We found that the attitudes of students in biology become significantly more expert-like from the first year to the fourth year of the program, that is, there was a significant positive shift in students’ overall percent favorable scores from 64.5 to 72%, as opposed to the expert response, which averaged 90%. There was a significant positive shift for the real world connection category (78–85%), the enjoyment (personal interest) category (74–82%), and the conceptual connections/memorization category (66–74%). Moreover, there was a significant correlation between students’ overall percent favorable scores and performance (cumulative grade point average) at the end, but not at the beginning, of the fourth year, with high-performing students having significantly more expert-like attitudes than low-performing students. The correlation between percent favorable score and performance was the strongest for the problem solving: synthesis and application category, in which the highest-performing students finished their fourth year with 90% favorable compared with 35% favorable for the lowest-performing students. A comparison of these results with previously reported results and their implications for teaching are discussed. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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