Category: Maths and Science Learning

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Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education Secondary School Education Uncategorized

Poor literacy skills hold poorer pupils back in science

A report, published by the Education Endowment Foundation and the Royal Society, has reviewed existing studies to identify interventions and teaching approaches that have a positive impact on pupil learning in science, particularly for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The researchers from the University of Oxford analysed data in the National Pupil Database in England to measure the extent of the gap in the performance between economically disadvantaged pupils and pupils from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds on national science tests. This analysis confirmed that disadvantaged pupils (pupils who have been entitled to free school meals at least once in the last six years) had much lower scores and made poorer progress in science, at every stage of their school career, than pupils from higher SES backgrounds. The gap, they suggest, first becomes apparent at Key Stage 1 (ages 5–7) and only gets wider throughout primary and secondary school. The gap for science is as wide as it is in English and maths, and grows particularly strongly between the ages of 5–7 and 11–16.

The study also found that the strongest factor affecting pupils’ science scores was how well they understood written texts. According to the report, poor literacy skills affect how well a pupil is able to understand scientific vocabulary and to prepare scientific reports. This suggests that strategies to boost disadvantaged pupils’ reading comprehension could have a positive impact on their achievement in science too. The authors write: “In correlational studies of science learning, the strongest and most consistent predictor of pupils’ scientific attainment has undoubtedly been how literate they are”. They add that there is a “strong relationship” between pupils’ socioeconomic status and their literacy.

A study, which we covered in a previous edition of Best Evidence in Brief, found a similar relationship between literacy and science achievement gaps for pupils in US elementary and middle schools.

 

Source: Nunes, T., Bryant, P., Strand, S., Hillier, J., Barros, R., & Miller-Friedmann, J. (2017). Review of SES and Science Learning in Formal Educational Settings. UK: Education Endowment Foundation.… Read the rest

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Achievement Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Homework and achievement in math and science

Fan and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to review the homework-achievement relationship in math and science given that the effect of subject matters had not been carefully examined.

Among more than two thousand studies related to homework and achievement available on digital databases between 1986 and 2015, 28 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were synthesized. Participants of the included studies were primary school, middle school or high school students. Key findings of those are as follows:

  • Overall, there was a small and positive relationship between homework and achievement in math and science.
  • The homework-achievement relationships were stronger in the studies operationally defined homework as “homework completion”, “homework grade”, and “homework effort” than the studies defined that as “homework frequency” and “time spent on homework”.
  • The relationship for elementary and high school students was stronger than that for middle school students.
  • The homework-achievement relationship was the strongest in studies involving US students while it was the weakest in studies involving Asian students. The authors suggested this seemingly counterintuitive result might be attributed to private tutoring that has been weakening the role of formal education in these countries.

The authors remarked that they only included studies written in English and there was an insufficient number of studies for them to consider the moderation effect of some important features, such as gender and complexity of homework assignments.

 

Source : Fan, H., Xu, J., Cai, Z., He, J., & Fan, X. (2017). Homework and students’ achievement in math and science: A 30-year meta-analysis, 1986–2015. Educational Research Review, 20, 35-54.… Read the rest

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Maths and Science Learning Secondary School Education

How much guidance should we give our students?

How much guidance should be provided to benefit students’ learning? According to the worked example effect, providing detailed worked examples might help students transferring knowledge to long-term memory. On the other hand, the generation effect suggested that requiring students to generate items themselves, instead of to do simply reading, might lead to better memory. A recent research study carried out by Chen and colleagues, published in Learning and Instruction, attempts to find out whether students learn better with higher or lower level of guidance, when the complexity of instructional materials in trigonometry and the levels of learner expertise are considered.

Participants were 94 Year 10 and 11 students in Chengdu, China. Fifty were Year 11 students who were regarded as relative expert learners as they had previously studied the trigonometry formulae, and the other 44 Year 10 students were novice learners. Students were randomly assigned into two groups for trigonometry learning before they were tested. During the preparation stage, materials of a higher level of guidance were given to one group, while the materials for the other group asked them to generate formulae and to solve problems themselves after studying. After preparation, all students were required to finish a free-recall test of trigonometry formulae and a problem-solving test of higher complexity. Two more tests were conducted a week later to examine the longer-term effect.

The hypothesis that high guidance would be superior to low guidance for complex materials, and low guidance would be superior to high guidance for simple materials was confirmed in the delayed test for the Year 10, less knowledgeable students. For the more knowledgeable Year 11 students, the worked example effect was found to be disappeared on both immediate and delayed tests. For simple content, requiring students to generate items themselves may be superior to studying explicitly provided answers, and is particularly beneficial to longer-term retention. However, explicit instruction is necessary for teaching complex materials to novice learners.

 

Sources: Chen, O., Kalyuga, S., & Sweller, J. (2016). Relations between the worked example and generation effects on immediate and delayed tests. Learning and Instruction, 45, 20-30.… Read the rest