New Perspectives in Science Education

Context-Based Science Education (CBSE) has a long-standing tradition and is considered as a highly promising approach in both current science education and educational psychology. Drawing on research in both areas, as well as on good practice reports from science classrooms, the present contribution reports on a research program on various forms of CBSE, ranging from paper-based to experimental approaches, such as learning tasks using newspapers (newspaper story problems, NSP) and smartphone-based experiments. The goal is to improve both motivation, including perceived authenticity, and learning, including  transfer.

Background theory and concepts and resulting hypotheses are explained, as well as the methods of their investigation (quasi-experimental repeated measures design, instrument choice and development, validity controls). In particular, an instrument for perceived authenticity (by learners) is presented. The results for NSP, when comparing treatment with control classes (with conventional exercises, but otherwise the same lesson plan, and the same teacher) show a significant and practically relevant positive effect for both motivation and learning, and for several age groups and learning topics (in all cases, p < 0.01 and Cohen d > 1). The results for other approaches investigated in the research program  (among others, advertisement story problems (ASP), or experiment-based learning activities and tasks) also show a considerable potential. A comparison and interpretation of these results will be discussed, as well as some limitations, open problems and new ideas.