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What Effects Do Didactic Interventions Have on Students’ Attitudes Towards Science? A Meta-Analysis

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Abstract

Improving the attitudes of students towards science is one of the main challenges facing the teaching of the subject. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of students’ attitudes towards science through different didactic interventions. The bibliographic search was carried out via the Web of Science database, specifically in the Education and Educational Research category, obtaining a population of 374 articles published between 2006 and 2016. We included studies with pre-experimental or quasi-experimental design that used pretest and posttest phases. Following the application of the inclusion criteria, 24 articles were selected with which a random effects meta-analysis was adopted, obtaining an average effect size of 0.54. Three moderating variables were analyzed, with a significant correlation between the type of teaching strategy and the effect of the attitude towards Science (Q = 23.17; df = 8; p < .01; R2 = 0.05). The educational implications are mainly due to the importance of the teaching/learning strategy used in science education in the development of positive attitudes towards the subject, and the need to increase the number of Didactic Interventions that contemplate students’ attitudes towards science as a study variable is also advocated.

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  1. Departamento de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales, Universidad de Granada, Campus Universitario Cartuja, Granada, 18011, Spain

    David Aguilera & F. Javier Perales-Palacios

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  1. David Aguilera
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Aguilera, D., Perales-Palacios, F. What Effects Do Didactic Interventions Have on Students’ Attitudes Towards Science? A Meta-Analysis. Res Sci Educ 50, 573–597 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-018-9702-2

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