Chinese students’ science-related experiences: Comparison of the ROSE study in Xinjiang and Shanghai

Abstract

Background: Students’ daily-life experiences may render favorable effects on the students’ affective domain like interest, enthusiasm, motivation, joy, curiosity, awareness, and eagerness to learn science as not commonly found in the classroom environment. However, no rigorous research has been reported on those aspects in Mainland China despite many recent studies done in various Western countries.

Purpose: This paper aims to report and compare the science-related experiences of ninth-graders from two places (in Urumqi City of Xinjiang province and Shanghai) in China through a large-scale survey of their junior secondary three students.

Sample: The sample consists of 4115 students in Urumqi City (from 28 schools) and Shanghai (from 25 schools).

Design and methods: This study adopted a Likert scale questionnaire instrument, as translated from the international Relevance Of Science Education (ROSE) Project. From a confirmatory factor analysis of the data, we identify and focus on six factors which are directly correlated with students’ science-related experiences outside school environment in Xinjiang and Shanghai and employ relevant factor scores to compare the gender, regional, and socioeconomic effects.

Results: As revealed by the t-test, gender and regional differences were statistically significant in affecting (1) students’ outdoor living experience, (2) hands-on experience of transportation, and (3) their daily-life experience with do-it-yourself tools and models. In all three aspects, boys and Xinjiang students possessed richer experiences than girls and Shanghai students, respectively.

Conclusions: Based on ANOVA tests, Shanghai students’ out-of-school science-related experiences were more often significantly affected by various socioeconomic variables (including their parents’ education and occupation and their family income) than Xinjiang students. From cross-regional comparison, Chinese students had much fewer science-related experiences than those of Greek and Finnish students. The limitations and educational implications of the present study are also discussed.

Keywords:

• science-related experiences
• Chinese learners
• ROSE project
• Shanghai
• Xinjiang

Acknowledgements

Funding support from the HKIEd and Research Grants Council is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks to the research assistants and scholars in Hong Kong Institute of Education, East China Normal University and Xinjiang Normal University for their help which facilitated the collection and processing of the research data. We would also like to express our special thanks to Prof. Svein Sjøberg for his kind support and advice in carrying out the ROSE project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Hong Kong grant number [RGC Ref. No. 843009].