Content area
Abstract
This study investigated the use of the schema of athletic activities and their effect upon achievement in physical science. The purpose of this study was to test whether congruency between narrative format and theme in conjunction with testing context produced better overall performances on physical science achievement tests.
Three tests were utilized which were written in a style that is used in commercial physical science programs, written within the context of a variety of athletic events and written in a context of objects and activities that related to vehicles respectively.
Four enrichment activities in the form of narratives were used. The narratives were either written in a style that students may encounter in a commercial textbook programs, focused on activities that were related to athletic events, centered on objects and activities that were related to motor vehicles or were unrelated to science in the control.
Descriptive statistics were utilized to describe achievement scores of each group of students. A 4 x 3 ANOVA was used to examine any differences among the cells. Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the reliability of each test. Scheffe's test of post-hoc comparisons of the test scores was also used.
The results of the study indicate that by tapping into the schema of sports, recall of the concepts related to Newton's laws of motion can be improved and enhanced in a physical science course. The students who participated in the study indicated that they had a high level of interest in sports, as reflected by the demographic information that was collected prior to the introduction of the pretest.
The results of this study indicate that there are no significant differences in performance as a result of different types of tests that were developed around Newton's laws of motion using a variety of contexts. The treatment that produced the best overall results on all tests of Newton's laws is one that consisted of a sports context.
The results support the evidence cited in literature which stated that addressing students' schema will affect learning by facilitating retention and recall of subject matter. This study has shown that Newton's laws of motion and interesting contextual material can be combined into instructional material. One of the implications of this study is that if science texts and exercises are based on topics in which students have demonstrated an interest, then increased recall and understanding may be realized in the science curriculum. A further implication of this study suggests that an effective method to teach Newton's laws seems to be to frame their principles in a context that uses sports as a reference.