High school science fair: Positive and negative outcomes
High school science fair: Positive and negative outcomes
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0229237
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发表时间：
2020-02-13
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Reisch, Joan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Grinnell, Frederick;Dalley, Simon;Reisch, Joan
我们正在进行的研究的目标是找出高中水平科学博览会的优势和劣势，以及可以帮助科学教育工作者使科学博览会成为更有效、更包容和更公平的学习体验的改进措施。在这篇文章中，我们从几个重要的方面证实和推广了我们之前的发现。我们在匿名和自愿的调查中增加了新的问题，以了解学生对科学或工程职业的兴趣程度，以及参加科学博览会是否增加了他们对科学或工程的兴趣。我们调查了全国性的高中生群体，而不是地区性的高中生群体，方法是将我们的调查纳入目前被德克萨斯州和其他一些州用于科学博览会注册、父母同意和项目管理的Scienteer在线门户网站。我们了解到，在2017年和2018年完成调查的300多名全国队列学生中，约有60%的人表示对科学或工程职业感兴趣，约有60%的人表示参加科博会增加了他们对科学或工程的兴趣。大约三分之二的学生被要求参加科学博览会，这一要求减少了学生说科学博览会提高了他们的兴趣的频率。在最坏的情况下，大约有10%的学生表示他们对科学或工程职业不感兴趣，并被要求参加科学博览会，他们从事的是研究不端行为(即抄袭和捏造成果)。学生对科博会竞争的正面评价主要集中在竞争动机上，而对非竞争性的科博会的正面评价主要集中在对科学过程的了解和总体学习上。我们在国家科学教学协会关于自愿参加科学博览会的指导下讨论了这一发现，并开始确定与学生对科学或工程兴趣的增加相一致的科学博览会实践的特征。
The goal of our ongoing research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of high school level science fair and improvements that can help science educators make science fair a more effective, inclusive and equitable learning experience. In this paper, we confirm and extend our previous findings in several important ways. We added new questions to our anonymous and voluntary surveys to learn the extent to which students had an interest in science or engineering careers and if science fair participation increased their interest in science or engineering. And we surveyed a national rather than regional high school student group by incorporating our survey into the Scienteer online portal now used by Texas and some other states for science fair registration, parental consent, and project management. We learned that about similar to 60% of the more than 300 students in the national cohorts completing surveys in 2017 and 2018 said that they were interested in a career in science or engineering, and similar to 60% said that participating in science fair increased their interest in science or engineering. About two-thirds of the students were required to participate in science fair, and that requirement reduced the frequency of students who said that science fair increased their interest. In the worst case, similar to 10% of the students who said that they were not interested in a career in science or engineering and who were required to participate in science fair engaged in research misconduct (i.e., plagiarism and making up their results). Students' positive comments about competition in science fair focused on the competition incentive, whereas their positive comments about science fair that was non-competitive focused on learning about the scientific process and learning in general. We discuss the findings in the context of National Science Teaching Association guidance about voluntary science fair participation and begin to identify features of science fair practice consistent with increased student interest in the sciences or engineering.