"Affective Teaching" to Learn Science: What is the Relationship between Practice and Achievement
Yamil Sanchez
Department of Teaching, Learning, & Technology
Abstract
In order for students to experience academic success, young people need a learning environment that fully integrates their emotional (affective) and cognitive development. Continuing to fail to help students achieve in science has critical local, national, and global consequences. Therefore, to reach the goal of educating students for a global market, educators must figure out how to get students to enjoy science.
This presentation will share the results of a pilot study that begins to build tools and insights related to the affective domain and motivation to learn science. The study included 11th grade students (N=138) in Delaware public high schools.
The purpose of this study was to validate the researcher created instrument for measuring student motivation to learn science as related to teacher use of affective instructional practices. The Motivation to Learn Science (MLS) Inventory is based on Krathwohl's Taxonomy of Affective Behaviors (Krathwohl et. al., 1964).
The MLS Inventory was found to have a high Chronbach Alpha value of .865 when considering all 25 questions. The subscales, however, did not reach the recommended alpha value of .700 or more to deem them as reliable. After the initial data analysis was completed, two questions were removed resulting in an increase to the overall Alpha value from .865 to .897. Also, three of the four subscales (Responding, Receiving, and Organization) reached Alpha values greater than .700. However, the Valuing subscale failed to reach a reliability value greater than .700.
Similar results were observed with the school level data. Both participating schools showed a high reliability (.860 for Wilmington Charter High School (WCHS) and .843 for Concord High School (CHS)) when considering all 25 questions.
The validated tool will serve as part of a broader study on the relationship between mode of instruction (affective vs. non-affective) and student motivation to learn science.
The findings from the study will also help with future research by providing a valid and reliable tool that can be used with continuous efforts for assessing effective instruction in high school science classrooms. Findings from this study will also serve as a source of information for the development of other similar tool (s) in the field of science and/or other content areas.
Bio:
Yamil Sanchez is a doctoral candidate, working under the guidance of Dr. Lynn Columba. He is an educator with over 14 years experience of working with schools and nonprofits. Mr. Sanchez has served as a Science teacher in Reading, Allentown, and Philadelphia. He has also worked as an administrator of youth and family services for nonprofits in Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware. He is a Board Member of Kuumba Academy Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware.
