The effect of hands-on activities on children’s knowledge and disgust for animals

Abstract

Research has shown that hands-on activities in biology/science education tend to improve children’s attitudes towards science. These hands-on activities can influence children’s interest in various ways, perhaps because they invoke varying emotions. We used a sample of 10–12-year-old children (n = 142) to examine the effect of hands-on activities with living snails on children’s achievements and disgust sensitivity. Children with living snails received significantly higher knowledge scores about snails measured with both a knowledge test and with analyses of drawings as compared with control children who received a traditional lecture without living snails. Disgust sensitivity was significantly lower in the experimental group and children who scored higher on the disgust scale received a lower knowledge test score. It would seem that the emotion of disgust negatively correlates with achievement.

Keywords:

• Achievement
• emotion
• hands-on activities
• disgust for animals

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank David Livingstone for improving the English and Júlia Šuleková for help with the data collection. Two anonymous referees provided insightful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.