Examining the Attitudes and Perceptions of College Students towards High and Low-Level Inquiry Exercise Physiology Teaching Laboratory Experiences
Abstract
The purpose of this research was to differentiate the attitudes of students towards two kinds of science laboratory learning experiences. The learning experiences were in the form of traditional, cookbook style and entailed high-inquiry level and low-inquiry level analytical tasks. Also, the research endeavored to compare and measure the attitudes of students towards science and student’s science-related attitudes. The selected students took part in five-week low-level inquiry activities, and after completion, they participated in another five weeks of high-level inquiry tasks. At the end of the semester, an open-ended survey was administered and was evaluated by an X test. The study indicated that (1) Most of the students liked the high-level task more than the low-level activities. (2) The events of the high-level inquiry did not negatively impact student’s motivation while in the laboratory. (3) Students believed that they grasped some insight into physiology principles with the activities in the low-level inquiry. In general, most students enjoyed the high-level project, mainly the freedom, independence, personal relevance, and responsibility. Most of those who did not enjoy the high-level project admitted that they were not comfortable with the lack of guidance and structure. However, most of the students attained a more realistic and positive perception of scientific research and often portrayed an improvement towards respect for science. Conversely, the Likert scale survey that was conducted before and after the five-week phase did not show any considerable change in student’s attitudes towards embracement of scientific approaches, taking pleasure in science lessons and showing motivation towards science (Wolf et al., 2008). The study was able to give insight on how to better implement high-level projects in the future.
Reference
Wolf, S. J., & Fraser, B. J. (2008). Learning environment, attitudes and achievement among middle-school science students using inquiry-based laboratory activities. Research in science education, 38(3), 321-341.
Abstract