"Effectiveness of a suggested Program in Chemistry for Enhancing the Scientific concepts, critical thinking skills and Attitude toward Chemistry learning for the high School Students”

Beni- Suef University Faculty of Education Department of Curricula& Methodology "Effectiveness of a suggested Program in Chemistry for Enhancing the Scientific concepts, critical thinking skills and Attitude toward Chemistry learning for the high School Students” PhD. thesis for Obtaining PhD. Degree in Education (Specialized in Curricula and Science Education) By Hala Abd El-Kader Said El-Senousy Assistant Lecturer in Curricula and Methodology Department, Faculty of Education, Beni-Suef University Supervised by Prof. Dr. /Ahmad Ahmad Abd El-Kalik Professor of Physical Chemistry Faculty of Science Beni-Suef University Prof. Dr. / Andreas Kometz Professor of Chemistry Education Faculty of Educational Sciences Humanities, Friedrich Alexander, Erlangen-Nürnberg University, Germany Dr. / Emad El-Din A. El-Wasimy. Associate Professor of Curricula and Science Education Faculty of Education-Beni-Suef University 2009 Introduction: There is no doubt that the scientific progress in the current period requires a special kind of persons, whom have awareness to understand and apply this progress in their life; thus the students' ability to accommodate with the future requirement depends on their skill for standard and critical thinking. These lead to increase the national and international interesting to develop thinking and its skills as one of the most important trends of the educational process. As a result the educational scientists refer to critical thinking developing as a one of the most important Educational products for developing the Educational curriculum especially scientific one. The high school is very essential stage in the Educational system, which guide to higher Education and maturity. Chemistry is vital subject for many studies in higher Education; the current advanced trends call within the research-based implication for future chemical and science education were critically discussed. The strong commitment to disciplinary strength in chemistry teaching has resulted in failing to strengthen the links between the advances social/individual sciences and in the students' introduced information. For a along time, science and particularly chemistry made a huge impact on people's lives. There is no science other than chemistry could change our live as much as chemistry did. We didn't realize it, but whoever we are; wherever we live chemistry is present in everything. We do, improving our lifestyle and the world about us. In the future, society expect from scientists to invent new materials, new sustainable ways to make use, and dispose of them to help more people to appreciate the impact of Chemistry on everyday life will increase, therefore it is essential for the students to have suitable grounding about Chemistry to esteem, learn and take it as job. The important connection of students' learning of daily life and societal issues are appearing in many principles that deal with the role of Chemistry on everyday life. Developmental researches offer many principles as: "need-to-know", "Learn- to- Use", "Useful Chemistry", "Chemistry for life", "Chemistry in life", "Chemistry in individual social context", "Chemistry and you", "green Chemistry", " Chemistry in context" ect. And the entire principles based on authentic practices and projects, offer approach for developing a context-based chemistry curriculum, and how students can see the role of chemistry in their life without all complex theoretical details, this role might be useful or might be harmful, and that need critical thinking to decide. There is a need to perform a lot of psychological studies and applications, on developing critical thinking skills by considering the students' needs, and teaching Chemistry that depending on discovering the information, with giving an adequate chance for critical analysis, examining and evaluating. This is possibly to change the negative attitude toward chemistry learning and other scientific subjects, and adjust the students choosing to continue scientific studying and occupation. The pervious studies concerning with evaluation of the current state of Chemistry educational process showed that there were some problems as reduction in the students' numbers whom choose chemistry learning, where the students had negative attitudes toward chemistry learning, shortage in students' thinking skills either in high or low levels and restriction in gathering information of practical way. In Addition the curricula contain old information, offer very complex concepts, traditional methods of teaching and methods of evaluation focus on achievement without interesting in the usage of knowledge or critical thinking on its importance in modern scientific life. So there is a gap between what the student learn in the school, and what he and his society need to match the scientific progress from the other side. So there is a great inquiry today in how to reduce the gap between the cognitive, emotional outcomes of the conventional high chemistry curriculum and what are the aims to be attained. So the researcher found that there is a need to prepare a suggested program in teaching chemistry and developing critical thinking skills for high school students. Although various studies were done in this field there are shortage in Arabic studies aimed to develop scientific concepts, critical thinking skills, and attitude toward chemistry learning. Based on the available literatures there are no empirical studies dealing with production of a program in chemistry for high school that takes the "daily life domains of chemistry" as philosophy for preparing a program. Identification of the research problem: There is a large necessary to show the importance of science in the student life; that may guide him to prefer this science. Especially, Chemistry is one of the most important branches of science in our daily life, where we realize the role of Chemistry in all of our life domains. So it may be propose that introducing the important role of Chemistry in the life of student in high school with fascinated way. This will encourage him to think critically on its concepts and he will be positive toward Chemistry learning. The previous studies and what the researcher detected through using questionnaires to explore the views of some students, teachers, and directors of high school of chemistry indicated that the curriculum of chemistry in this stage didn’t develope from this point and there are some difficulties in understanding some topics, which guide the students to learn information without interesting, understanding, or analyzing it. Most caring directed to reach high degrees, without giving them the chance for doing mind and thinking, also there is a deviation in doing experiments, applying activities and the question of evaluation with an open ends, all these points hinder the students attitude toward chemistry learning. The problem of the current research identified through the following main question “What is the Effectiveness of a suggested Program in Chemistry for Enhancing the Scientific concepts, critical thinking skills and Attitude toward Chemistry learning for the high School Students?” From this main question following question branched: 1) What are the problems that face the high school students and hinder the Students Chemistry learning? 2) What are the domains and subjects of chemistry which could be included in the content of the suggested program? 3) To which extent the current chemistry curricula in high school included the suggested domains and subjects? 4) What is the general framework for the suggested program in chemistry for high school students? 5) What is the effectiveness of the suggested program in developing the scientific concepts for the high school students? 6) What is the effectiveness of the suggested program in developing the critical thinking skills for the high school students? 7) What is the effectiveness of the suggested program in developing attitude toward chemistry learning for the high school students? The importance of the research: - 1- Thinking developing and especially critical thinking considered one of the most important aims which the scientist call during the 21st century. 2- The research may consider a try to help curricula designers to develop the chemical program for high school Students in a critical way by discussing and evaluating the modern concepts. 3- The suggested program may be useful for the planners of the curriculums of science in thinking skills. 4- The research may be useful for supporters of building tests in chemistry to measure some point such as, critical thinking, academic achievement and the attitude toward chemistry learning. Objectives of the Research: This research aims to determine: 1- The problems that face the high school students and hinder the Students Chemistry learning. 2- The domains and subjects of chemistry which could be included in the content of the suggested program. 3- The extent of the current chemistry curricula in the high school included the suggested domains and subjects. 4- The general framework for the suggested program in chemistry for high school students. 5- The effectiveness of the suggested program in developing the scientific concepts for the high school students. 6- The effectiveness of the suggested program in developing the critical thinking skills for the high school students. 7- The effectiveness of the suggested program in developing attitude toward chemistry learning for the high school students. Hypotheses of the research: Hypothesis of the research appear as the following: 1) The curricula of Chemistry (aims, contents) don't take into account the suggested domains and subjects of chemistry in suitable level. 2) There is a statistically significant difference between the mean degrees of the student in the experimental group in the pretest and their degrees in the posttest of the “achievement test” in favor of the posttest. 3) There is a statistically significant difference between the mean degrees of the student in the experimental group in the pretest and their degrees in the posttest of the “test of critical thinking skills” in favor of the posttest. 4) There is a statistically significant difference between the mean degrees of the student in the experimental group in the pretest and their degrees in the posttest of the “scale of attitude toward chemistry learning” in favor of the posttest. Tools and instruments of the research: The following tools are used in this research (prepared by the researcher): • The materials of experimental treatment as the suggested program, the experimental unit, teacher guidebook, and the students' papers • The achievement test for scientific concepts of the experimental unit. • The test of critical thinking skills. • The Scales of attitude toward chemistry learning. The method of the research: The following research methods manipulated -The Descriptive Method: To describe the list of daily life chemical domains, and the evaluation of current chemistry curricula. -The Experimental Method: To assess the effectiveness of the suggested program depends on one experimental group, and the comparison of the results between the pre-test and post-test. Variable of the research: The dependent variable:- - The suggested program as showed by the experimental unit consists of aims; contents include suggested daily life domains of chemistry (Chemistry and Energy), teaching strategies and styles of evaluations, which are suitable to perform the experimental unit. The independent variable: - - Knowledge in scientific concepts. - Critical thinking skills. - Attitude toward chemistry learning. Procedure of the Research: Procedure of the present research according to the following steps: 1) Preparation of the theoretical construction for the research through knowledge on previous literary and educational psychological studies which related to research variables. 2) Identify the difficulties and causes that hinder chemistry learning for high school students, through preparation of questionnaire for student and their teacher opinions around those reasons. 3) Preparation of a list includes some domains and subjects of daily life chemistry which could be included in the suggested program. This occurs through: a- Scanning the previous studies, projects and experiments in the field of developing of chemistry curricula to survive the new trends. b- Using some textbooks and scientific journals related to chemistry sciences and their applications (daily life) domains. 3) Showing a list of daily life domains and subjects of chemistry to experts to determine the level of its importance and suitability for the students of the high school, and modify it according to their suggestion and opinion as ten domains: Introduction to Chemistry - Nutritional Chemistry- Agricultural Chemistry- Medical Chemistry- Energy Chemistry -Environmental Chemistry- Nuclear Chemistry- Industrial Chemistry- Chemistry of sold waste - New Chemical materials. 4) Converging the list of ten principle domains and arranging it into many sub- domains and the concepts details of entire domains, then showing a list of daily life domains and subjects of chemistry to experts to determine the level of its importance as content of the suggested program, and modify it according to their suggestion and opinion to reach the final form. 5) Preparing two aids of investigation analyzing the high school chemistry curricula (aims and content) in the view of the list, and Showing it to Educational experts. 6) Analyzing the aims and content of current chemistry curricula in the first class and high grade in the view of the two investigation aids to withstand on the extent of contaminating the chemical daily life domains. 7) Survey the opinions of some high school chemistry teachers about the extent of contaminating the chemical daily life domains in the current chemistry curricula. 8) Preparing the general framework of the suggesting program, by elements and component in a shape of units for those students. 9) Showing the framework to experts to determine its validity, and which the importance of the units, and modify it to reach the final form. 10) Choosing the most important unit of the suggesting program to be experiment unit for the first class of high school students. 11) Preparing a student book, learning papers and teacher guidebook for the experimental unit and Showing them to experts to determine their validity. 12) Preparing the tools for measurements of the experimental unit, and Showing them to experts to determine their validity. 13) Accomplishing the experiment of the research. 14) Analyzing, showing, and conclusions interpretation of the results. 15) Showing the recommendation according to the results of the research. The Results of the Research: As for the first Question: What are the problems that face the high school students and hinder the Students Chemistry learning? - The mean scores of students responds and teachers responds have been calculated and so were percentages to assess the value of the reasons that may hinder the Students Chemistry learning: -According to the students opinion the following reasons hinder their chemistry learning, first is the topics that included in chemistry content 58 %, second is the students' negative attitudes (48%), while the chemistry nature is the last reason 46%. -According to the teachers opinion the topics that included in chemistry content and the students' negative attitudes had the similar rank 58 %, 52%, and the chemistry nature is the next reason 46% that hinder the Students Chemistry learning. As for the second Question: What are the domains and subjects of chemistry which could be included in the content of the suggested program? - It was answered during the research procedures, as the final domains list showed in appendix (4, Pp 152-156). As for the third Question: to which extent the current chemistry curricula in high school included the suggested domains and subjects? - Scores have been calculated and so were percentages to assess the extent of including the current chemistry curricula (aims and content) the suggested domains and subjects in the view of the two analyzing aids: According to the aims: the current chemistry curricula included only (first class 32, high grade 30) aim as 13 % of the total (238) suggested aim, so it is very less than 60% which the current research considered as suitable including level. According to the content: the current chemistry curricula included only (first class 31, high grade 30) topic as about 15 % and 14% of the total (208) suggested topic, so they are very less than 60% which the current research considered as suitable including level. According to the teachers opinions- for aims: the current chemistry curricula included 15 % aim of the suggested aims, and for content: about 17% of the suggested topics, so it is similar to the researcher results and also very less than 60% which the current research considered as suitable including level. - And hence the first hypothesis can be accepted as "the curricula of Chemistry (aims, contents) don't take into account the suggested domains and subjects of chemistry in suitable level". As for the fourth Question: What is the general framework for the suggested program in chemistry for high school students? - It was answered during the research procedures, as framework showed in the appendix (12, Pp 192- 197) As for the fifth Question: What is the effectiveness of the suggested program in developing the scientific concepts for the high school students? - means scores have been calculated and standard deviations to assess a t-test, it was done at 0.01 level of significance, as the calculated t value was 14.43 and more that tabled 2.7; so a significant difference was found between the main score of pretest degree and the main score of posttest in favor of posttest of achievement test. - This revere that the learning of the experimental unit enhances the scientific concepts as showed by achievement test for the high school students. - And hence the second hypothesis can be accepted as "there is a statistically significant difference between the mean degrees of the student in the experimental group in the pretest and their degrees in the posttest of the “achievement test” in favor of the posttest". As for the sixth Question: What is the effectiveness of the suggested program in developing the critical thinking skills for the high school students? - means scores have been calculated and standard deviations to assess a t-test, it was done at 0.01 level of significance, as the calculated t value was 13.5 and more that tabled 2.7; so a significant difference was found between the main score of pretest degree and the main score of posttest in favor of posttest of critical thinking test. - This revere that the learning of the experimental unit enhances the critical thinking skills as showed by critical thinking test for the high school students. - And hence the third hypothesis can be accepted as "there is a statistically significant difference between the mean degrees of the student in the experimental group in the pretest and their degrees in the posttest of the “test of critical thinking skills” in favor of the posttest". As for the seventh Question: What is the effectiveness of the suggested program in developing attitude toward chemistry learning for the high school students? - means scores have been calculated and standard deviations to assess a t-test, it was done at 0.01 level of significance, as the calculated t value was 14.03 and more that tabled 2.7; so a significant difference was found between the main score of pretest degree and the main score of posttest in favor of posttest of attitude toward chemistry learning scale. - This revere that the learning of the experimental unit enhances the attitude toward chemistry learning as showed by attitude toward chemistry learning scale for the high school students. - And hence the fourth hypothesis can be accepted as "there is a statistically significant difference between the mean degrees of the student in the experimental group in the pretest and their degrees in the posttest of the “scale of attitude toward chemistry learning” in favor of the posttest". Recommendations: Based on the reviewed findings, the present research recommends that 1- Emphasizing the latest trends in chemistry education in high school, such daily life approach in curricula developing. 2- Including the important role of chemistry in chemistry curricula to encourage the positive attitude toward chemistry as one of the main educational aims. 3- Introducing the chemistry curriculum in the first class during the whole year, not only one semester, to give real chance for thinking development. 4- Achieving separate discipline daily life chemistry curriculum for the students whom; did not choose to learn scientific subjects branches. 5- Holding seminars, workshops and conferences that deal with chemistry applications for the different educational stages and teacher preparation training programs. 6- Offering the chance for some lessons for the students to discuss the scientific and chemical issues that they hear or see through the media critically, and reaching the accurate opinion by information investigation. 7- Emphasizing the ongoing in-service training of teachers to purpose of active learning methods and the latest trends of scientific education. 8- Encouraging the publishers and books store to introduce many chemistry books in the view of daily life to choose between them. 9- Taking in consideration the teachers opinions by chemistry curricula developing. 10- Providing the class library with many books and journals to encourage the students to read about the chemistry importance in life.