Science classroom activities and student situational engagement

ABSTRACT

This study examines the association between student situational engagement and classroom activities in secondary school science classrooms in Finland and the U.S. Situational engagement is conceptualised as times when students feel that a task is interesting and challenging to them and that they have the skills to complete it (see Schneider et al., 2016. Investigating optimal learning moments in U.S. and Finnish science classes. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(3), 400–421. doi:10.1002/tea.21306). Data on situational engagement and classroom activities were obtained using the experience sampling method (ESM) from 247 Finnish students in 13 secondary science classrooms and 281 U.S. students in 18 secondary science classrooms. In both samples, the students tended to be situationally engaged only a small proportion of the time during their science classes. However, the Finnish students were more likely than the U.S. students to report being situationally engaged. To investigate when the students were most likely to report being situationally engaged, hierarchical logistic regression models were employed, which suggested that some classroom activities were associated with higher levels of student situational engagement than others. The Finnish students were more likely to report being situationally engaged when calculating and presenting scientific information. In the U.S., the students were more likely to report being situationally engaged while discussing scientific information and less likely when listening to the teacher. The results suggest that situational engagement is momentary and associated with specific science classroom activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Situational engagement
• science
• classroom activities
• experience sampling method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Inkinen Janna http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2856-4601

Juuti Kalle http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8696-2611

Lavonen Jari http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2781-7953

Salmela-Aro Katariina http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1901-4712

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland under Grant [No. 298323 – PI Katariina Salmela-Aro] and [No. 294228 – PI Jari Lavonen], and the National Science Foundation under Grant [No. 1450756 & No. 1545684 – PIs Barbara Schneider and Joseph Krajcik]. Research findings and interpretations are those of the authors and not of the funding agencies. Data and code related to this project will eventually be available at http://doi.org/10.3886/E100380V1.