Students' Attitudes towards Science in Classes Using Hands-On or Textbook-Based Curriculum

The development and use of hands-on science curricula in elementary school has been a major reform effort of the past two decades. However, research on the results of these efforts has been ambiguous. A recent study by Pine et al (2006) reported on the results of a large-scale assessment of the science knowledge and skills of students who learned with hands on science and students who learned with textbooks.

Their results showed generally low scores on performance assessments for both types of students with only a minor advantage for the hands-on students (on one of four assessments). This paper looks at some additional data from that study on students' attitude towards science and science topics. The authors found that students in the hands-on classes were generally more favorable to science and had a better understanding of the nature of science than students in textbook classes. The differences in attitude do not correlate significantly with test scores.

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