Hands-on Activities and Their Influence on Students’ Interest
By Nina Holstermann, D. Grube, S. Bögeholz. 2010
319 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This study investigates the influence of hands-on activities on students’ interest. We researched whether students with experience in specific hands-on activities show higher interest in these activities than students without experience. Furthermore, the relationship between the quality of the hands-on experience and interest in the respective activity was examined. In total, 28 typical hands-on activities of biology education were considered. The activities were divided into the categories experimentation, dissection, work with microscopes, and classification. A total of 141 students from the 11th grade completed questionnaires on interest in the hands-on activities, their experience with each activity, and the quality of the respective experience. Students’ interest in experimenting, working with microscopes, dissecting and classifying tends to benefit from performing hands-on activities. However, findings indicated that the performance of various hands-on activities can influence students’ interest differently. For seven hands-on activities, we identified a positive effect of hands-on experience on interest, while in one case, practical work appeared to have influenced students’ interest negatively. However, for most hands-on activities, no effect of experience on interest was found. The quality of hands-on experiences showed positive correlations with interest in the respective hands-on activities. Therefore, this paper argues in favour of designing biology lessons that allow for experiences with hands-on activities that also interest students. Our findings underline the necessity of investigating the effects of various hands-on activities in a differentiated manner.
Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6609cccd4d760876d61a9688f547ae4de9f4b3d2
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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
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Citations in the corpus
- Upper Secondary Students’ Situational Interest: A case study of the role of a zoo visit in a biology class (2013, background): “Hands-on experiences have been reported as important sources of interest, and the main reason is manipulation of object involves perception as well as engagement (Holstermann, Grube, & Bogeholz, 2010 ; Middleton, 1995 ; Mitchell, 1993 ; Palmer, 2009 ).”
- Examining the effects of the flipped model of instruction on student engagement and performance in the secondary mathematics classroom: An action research study (2013, background): “In addition, conducting hands-on activities leads to positive motivational outcomes (Holstermann et al., 2009).”
- STEM Learning through Engineering Design: Impact on Middle Secondary Students’ Interest towards STEM (2016, background): “Many hands-on activities offer the potential to positively influence students’ interests in the activities (Holstermann et al., 2010).”