New Perspectives in Science Education

Scientific imagination is an integration between imaginative thinking and scientific knowledge. It is an ability to construct the pictures, models and stories in an individual’s brain in order to understand the problems or situations based on the accurate scientific knowledge which leads to the development of creativity. The purpose of this study was to study scientific imagination of lower secondary school students in Thailand using the scientific imagination test. This test was developed by adapting from Scientific Imagination Test-Verbal (SIT-Verbal) proposed by Wang, Ho & Cheng (2015) and was provided to lower secondary school students. The researcher created 4 problems in the test related to students’ everyday life situations which are 1) The planet 2) Teka country 3) Electronic waste and 4) Songkran festival (water festival in Thailand). The test was verified by 5 experts and tried out with 45 lower secondary school students (Grade 7-9), 15 students in each level. The reliability of the test using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was equaled  0.888. The researcher collected data from 213 lower secondary school students who studied in Grade 7 (n = 85), Grade 8 (n = 64) and Grade 9 (n = 64) from 6 schools in Bangkok, Loei, Kanchanaburi, Rayong and Nonthaburi provinces. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between groups of students as analyzed by one-way ANOVA (F =5.248, p = .006). Scientific imagination scores of students in grade 7 were statistically significant different from students in grade 8 (p = .008). In addition, there were no statistically significant differences between scientific imagination scores of students in grade 7 and 8 (p = .847), as well as, students in grade 8 and 9 (p= .060). 

Keywords: Scientific imagination, Lower secondary school students.

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