Effects of Classroom Openness on Science Students’ Achievement and Attitudes

Abstract

Because considerable prior research on open education has produced inconclusive or conflicting results, the present investigation was designed to overcome common weaknesses in past studies. A sample of 2175 students in 116 science classes provided their perceptions of actual and preferred classroom openness along five continuous dimensions (personalisation, participation, independence, investigation, differentiation) and responded to a cognitive and an affective outcome measure. Results replicated prior findings in that actual openness accounted for a significant amount of the variance in affective but not cognitive achievement. But actual‐preferred interactions also accounted for a substantial and significant amount of variance in both cognitive and affective outcomes. Findings supported the value of employing a person‐environment interactional framework in open education research, and suggested that actual‐preferred interaction could be at least as important as openness per se in predicting student outcomes in science classrooms.