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Students’ Achievement in Learning Chemistry Through the Design and Construction Approach to Laboratory Activity and the Relation with their Prior Achievements and Motivation to Learn

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Learning with Understanding in the Chemistry Classroom

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Abstract

Students’ achievement in learning chemistry through the design and construction approach to laboratory activity and the relation with their prior achievements and motivation to learn is discussed in this chapter by Vrtačnik, Sodja, and Juriševič. Authors claim that the design and construction approach to activities in chemistry lessons for middle school students is regarded as an authentic science activity, and that this approach to learn chemistry is quite rarely practised in science classes. In this approach, students were asked to design their own experiments and control variables. The results suggest that students’ success in the design and construction approach depended upon the complexity of a particular task. A significant drop off in achievements and motivation scores was found with tasks based on more abstract thinking, e.g., analyzing data and setting up hypotheses. In evaluating the design and construction approach, students expressed the highest appreciation for a positive classroom atmosphere and their active participation in the laboratory activity. The research findings revealed that students with higher achievement in chemistry are also highly extrinsically and intrinsically motivated for learning chemistry and have a higher academic self-concept.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the financers of this project and especially all participating students and teachers, without whose dedication and willingness to cooperate the realization of the project would not have been possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Vegova 4, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Margareta Vrtačnik & Kristina Sodja

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva pl 16, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Mojca Juriševič

Authors
  1. Margareta Vrtačnik
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  2. Kristina Sodja
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  3. Mojca Juriševič
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Margareta Vrtačnik .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Iztok Devetak

  2. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Saša Aleksij Glažar

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Vrtačnik, M., Sodja, K., Juriševič, M. (2014). Students’ Achievement in Learning Chemistry Through the Design and Construction Approach to Laboratory Activity and the Relation with their Prior Achievements and Motivation to Learn. In: Devetak, I., Glažar, S. (eds) Learning with Understanding in the Chemistry Classroom. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4366-3_11

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