New Perspectives in Science Education

Even though motivation and interest as important factors for learning have been researched widely from the 20th century on, there is still no evident way to promote interest in science among all students. Chemistry in particular is a subject that needs to be a target of such interest interventions because even after reforming educational standards and curricula due to shocking PISA results in the early 2000s, chemistry stays one of the least likeable subjects in German schools [1]. Especially approaches like context-based learning [2] and authentic learning [3] are often portrayed as suitable methods for increasing students’ interest in STEM disciplines, but results remain overall ambiguous.

To some extent, these scattered results are based on a lack of a unity of the theories and models used to research interest, which is why the interpretation-evaluation model was developed as a combined conceptual framework for explaining interest in chemistry using context-based learning environments with authentic problems [4].

In this talk, the specially designed “Grey’s Anatomy Setting” as a method for integrating medical contexts into chemistry education is explained in short. Then, results from out-of-school laboratories using these authentic medical contexts are discussed as a first impression on how to validate the interpretation-evaluation model using a survey instrument for assessing situational interest in context-based learning environments [5]. Implications concerning using these findings to design adaptive, interest enhancing learning environments in chemistry education are given as well as an outlook to further research work on the interpretation-evaluation model of interest.