Effect of explicit and reflective activity-based instruction on senior secondary physics students’ views towards Nature of Science

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effect of explicit and reflective activity-based instruction (ERABI) on senior secondary physics students' views towards the Nature of Science (NOS) in Rwanda. We administered a questionnaire on NOS to a sample of 148 participants enrolled in the senior five physics-chemistry-biology combination. A mixed research approach that embedded a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design (experimental and control) was used. After the intervention which lasted for six weeks, a significant change in students' views about NOS was noted in all targeted NOS aspects in this study. The study found that the effect size of the intervention was large for all seven NOS aspects as eta squared was above 0.4 for targeted NOS aspects; moreover, a very large effect was noted for four NOS aspects, tentative nature (0.709), social and cultural contexts in science (0.605), creativity and imagination (0.562), and observation and inference (0.518). The normalised gain for all these aspects was also found to be high. We also found that the change in students' understanding pf NOS is not affected by school location (rural or urban), school status (day or boarding school) and gender. Therefore, the implementation of ERABI seems to provide an answer to promote the standard understanding of NOS.

KEYWORDS:

• Nature of Science (NOS)
• explicit and reflective activity-based instruction (ERABI)
• physics students’ views
• senior secondary schools

View correction statement:

Correction

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all secondary school physics students who participated in the study. We thank University of Rwanda-College of Education for financial support through ACEITLMS. Warm thanks go to the districts’ (Kayonza and Kicukiro districts) managements for issuing the permission to allow data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The paper is related to the PhD research project of the first author. The research project successfully passed through an internal collegial ethical process, and the ethics committee known as ‘the Directorate of Research and Innovation’ from University of Rwanda-College of Education confirmed that it adheres to ethical standards and principles. The approval number is Ref: 03/DRI-CE/059/EN/gi/2020. Before starting data collection, University of Rwanda-College of Education wrote an introduction letter to the authorities of Kayonza and Kicukiro districts, for the researcher to carry out research. The letter was presented to the district level and education officers from both districts (Kayonza and Kicukiro districts) allowed the researcher to collect data. The district education officers introduced the researcher to the head teachers at the senior secondary schools where this study was carried out. Thereafter, the head teachers also introduced the researcher to teachers as well as the students. The students participated in this study with their choice as they were free to either participate or not. An informed consent letter was prepared to ensure that the information provided by the participants would be kept confidential and was confined to the present study for academic purposes only. The respondents and schools were coded instead of reflecting the names.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2024.2358293)