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Evaluation of a Process by which Individual Interest Supports Learning Within a Formal Middle School Classroom Context

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Abstract

The affective domain and its impact on science achievement has been studied with increasing attention over the past decade. However, there has been little empirical work on how individual interest, and facilitation of situational interest in the classroom, facilitates learning of concepts within fine-grained units of instruction. Drawing upon previous theoretical and empirical work, we test the hypothesis that individual interest facilitates situational interest, and that this in turn facilitates content learning, with respect to a 10-day health education intervention focused on teaching middle school students about light, color, and vision. We found that individual interest in science facilitates situational interest in the classroom activities and the teacher’s instruction, and that situational interest has a positive and significant effect on learning concepts related to light and vision. Our data suggest that facilitating situational interest is a requirement if individual interest and prior knowledge are to be effective scaffolds for conceptual learning. However, targeting of other affective traits like motivation and engagement or cognitive processes like goal setting may be necessary to fully harness students’ interest toward effective scaffolding of learning.

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Funding

This work was supported by Missouri Foundation for Health grant 12-0463-WFD-12, NIH SEPA grant 8 R25 GM 129228-02, and the participating teachers and students. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missouri Foundation for Health or the NIH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy, Dayton, OH, 45435, USA

    William Romine

  2. Department of Applied Statistics and Research Methods, University of Northern Colorado, Campus Box 124, Greeley, CO, 80639, USA

    Chia-Lin Tsai

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy, Dayton, OH, 45435, USA

    Michele Miller

  4. National Board of Chiropractic Examiners, 901 54th Ave, Greeley, CO, 80634, USA

    Nai-En Tang

  5. Department of Biochemistry, 117 Schweitzer Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    William Folk

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  1. William Romine
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Romine, W., Tsai, CL., Miller, M. et al. Evaluation of a Process by which Individual Interest Supports Learning Within a Formal Middle School Classroom Context. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 18, 1419–1439 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10032-1

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