Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning

Ann Renninger, Martina Nieswandt , Suzanne Hidi

• Publisher: American Educational Research Association
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780935302424
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning, edited by K. Ann Renninger, Martin Nieswandt, and Suzanne Hidi, is the first volume to assemble findings on the role of interest in mathematics and science learning. As the contributors illuminate across the volume's 22 chapters, interest provides a critical bridge between cognition and affect in learning and development. This volume will be useful to educators, researchers, and policy makers, especially those whose focus is mathematics, science, and technology education.

Section 1

Interest and Other Motivational and Demographic Variables

Chapter 1

Early Science Learning Experiences: Triggered and Maintained Interest

MARY AINLEY and JOHN AINLEY

A key question for science educators is how to sustain interest in novel or intriguing scientific phenomena so that interest in science is maintained, with the potential to develop into a more enduring interest as manifested in choice of studies in senior high school and tertiary programs. According to Hidi and Renninger (2006), progress through the phases of interest development depends on the availability of opportunities to engage and reengage with content of the interest, and on support for taking up those opportunities. In this chapter, we investigate the validity of this proposition, examining evidence from early childhood studies, classroom experiences, and large-scale longitudinal studies.

Findings from young children’s expressions of interest and from research into family factors associated with adolescents’ educational development point to the important role of parents and teachers in identifying children’s interests and supporting them through provision of opportunities to engage with the interest. When we examine the evidence from classroom and curriculum research, we arrive at the same conclusion. For students to have more than a fleeting interest in science, they require classroom experiences that provide opportunities to engage with science activities that connect with their own experiences. Not the least of these is the opportunity to experience science through exposure to scientists and the work of scientists. Findings from a number of studies support the contention that early experiences with learning in general and science in particular underpin later choices—decisions to participate in science activities both in school and in the community as well as choices to study science at higher levels.

This wide-ranging evidence points to early childhood experience and to later classroom exposure to science in real-world environments as key to the development of interest in science. When opportunities for triggering interest in science, and ongoing support for maintenance of that interest in science, are features of these environments, students are likely to choose science studies in their last years of high school and to make science a part of their lifelong learning and activities.

Introduction

The Global Science Forum (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006) has responded to the declining percentage of students studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in many economies with a call to make science and technology studies more interesting. The forum observed that interest in science and technology emerges early in primary school and remains stable between the ages of 11 and 15 years but declines beyond 15 years of age. They recommended attention to curricula to better reflect modern science and technology and its social relevance, as well as enhancing the scientific and technical knowledge of teachers. This response focuses attention on the content of science and technology studies, with the implication that if the prospective content is sufficiently interesting, students will choose to study science. But what makes science and technology studies interesting? Can science and technology studies be designed in such a way that all students will have their interest triggered? How can this triggered interest be sustained, allowing access to information that will expand their knowledge and understanding of scientific phenomena?

In this chapter, we focus on the development of interests in two different but related ways. One perspective on interest development directs attention to the course of development of the interest itself. Distinctions are described in line with the successive phases of interest development proposed in Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) Four-Phase Model of Interest Development: triggered situational interest, maintained situational interest, emerging individual interest, and well-developed individual interest. According to Hidi and Renninger, progress through these phases of interest development depends on the availability of opportunities to engage and reengage with interest content. In the initial phases, this requires high levels of support, decreasing as the interest moves toward becoming an individual interest. We examine how opportunity and support are conditions promoting interest development.

Questions of triggering and maintaining interest in scientific phenomena direct attention to the immediate learning situation. What specific curriculum design and classroom practices provide opportunities to trigger interest in science and/or support its maintenance? Factors associated with triggering situational interest have been well documented (e.g., Hidi, 1990; Schraw & Lehman, 2001; Wade, 2001). When combined with the literature on curiosity (e.g., Berlyne, 1960; Cordova & Lepper, 1996), the research makes clear that encounters with novel or intriguing scientific phenomena will attract students’ attention and generate questions and exploratory activities focused on the novel or intriguing phenomenon. Interactions with interest content are likely to result in knowledge acquisition. For example, Palmer (2009) showed that although there was considerable variation in the level of situational interest associated with different types of activities, the strongest trigger for situational interest was novelty. However, for many students, the novelty quickly wears off, and they disengage. This is the problem of maintaining or sustaining the triggered interest.

A second perspective on interest development concerns the role of early experiences for later expression of interest in science. Which early experiences contribute to the likelihood that students will have their interest triggered by novel scientific phenomena? Which early experiences contribute to the maintenance of students’ interest beyond the initial triggering, allowing the development of an interest in science based on a strong core of scientific knowledge and understanding? What does it take for interest in science to be maintained so that it informs lifestyle and career choices?

In this chapter, we present research findings concerning young children’s expressions of interest, family contexts, and classroom experiences to explore how opportunity and support contribute to the development of interest in science. We then examine findings on students’ participation intentions and choice of studies in secondary school from research studies with participants representing broad student populations.

The Role of Opportunity and Support

Early Experiences and Interest in Science

It is clear from the literature that persistent interests do occur in very young children (e.g., Alexander, Johnson, Leibham, & Kelley, 2008; Renninger & Wozniak, 1985). The intensity and extent of attention to a particular category of objects or activities in some young children have given rise to the phrase “extremely intense interests” (DeLoache, Simcock, & Macari, 2007). For the purposes of this discussion, we explore what is known about young children’s interests that might be precursors for the development of sustained interest in science.

Early parenting influences. Research into curiosity and exploratory behavior in very young children has identified how particular types of interaction between parents or caregivers and children predict later behavior. In an early study of curiosity, Saxe and Stollack (1971) reported that children’s exploration and information seeking were contingent on mothers’ displays of positive feeling and curiosity toward the novel object. More recent findings (Chak, 2002) suggest that parental support of focused exploration is associated with knowledge and information acquisition. Findings from Alexander, Johnson, and colleagues’ longitudinal study (see Alexander, Johnson, & Kelley, 2012; Leibham, Alexander, Johnson, Neitzel, & Reis-Henrie, 2005) of the development of interests also highlight the importance of early interactions with parents that focus and support the exploration and engagement of young children in their preferred activities. Leibham et al. (2005) reported that the difference in parental behavior between four- and five-year-old children whose interests persisted over the following 24 months and those whose interests were relatively short term “has more to do with acknowledging the child’s continuing interest rather than with fulfilling a particular quota of interest-related experiences” (p. 410). This parental acknowledgment emphasized “academic stimulation” and curiosity and the provision of materials in the home related to the child’s expressed interests. Neitzel, Alexander, and Johnson (2008) reported that these types of interest can be seen in the information children contribute to discussions and activities in their kindergarten classes. Children’s choices of activities in the early school years suggest that some forms of early interests appear to set children on a course of interacting with experience in ways that support the development of interest in science.

The important contribution of early support for the development of interest in science is emphasized in Alexander and colleagues’ statement of the relation between opportunities provided by parents for participation in science-related activities and science interests (see Alexander et al., 2012; Leibham et al., 2005). Free play and opportunities to engage in conversation with parents around the interest activity were key aspects of parental support for interest development.

Parental influences in adolescence. In adolescence, we also find evidence that parents contribute to the development of students’ interests through provision of challenging and supportive family environments (Rathunde, 2001). Challenging family environments are those in which adolescents perceive that their families require them to invest attention and focus on what are considered to be important goals. In supportive family environments, parents are perceived as caring and warm, open to the adolescent’s point of view, and offering help when new or difficult situations arise. Rathunde and colleagues followed cohorts of adolescents—Grades 6 to 8, Grades 8 to 10, and Grades 10 to 12—over two years using experience sampling methods. Interest was investigated as “undivided interest,” which is characterized by strong positive affect generated when pursuing activities associated with important goals. The pattern of these researchers’ findings is echoed in perspectives such as expectancy-value theory, in which parent contributions are identified as an important socializing factor contributing to students’ academic choices (e.g., Eccles, Barber, Updegraff, & O’Brien, 1998). The results of large-scale surveys of parents as part of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 in 14 countries also point to the importance of parental involvement in reading and discussions of complex issues at early ages for types of engagement as well as cognitive and noncognitive outcomes (Borgonovi & Montt, 2012). These results in the domain of reading have parallels in the exploration of natural phenomena and science.

Opportunities for conversation with parents around interest activities are a key aspect of parental support for interest development in young children. The same appears to be the case with support for adolescent students’ interest in science. For example, Stocklmayer, Durant, and Cerini (2011) implemented a pilot program giving hands-on experience of secondary school science to a group of mothers who lacked confidence with science. The program was delivered by science specialists to help mothers develop knowledge and language to discuss science activities. Qualitative analyses suggested that one of the strongest positive outcomes was mothers reporting the discussions about science they were now able to have with their adolescent children. In a recent experimental study, Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, and Hyde (2012) demonstrated that encouraging conversations between parents and adolescents about the value of science has a significant impact on students’ choices of STEM courses in their later years of high school.

Curriculum and Classroom Experience

The findings on the early development of interest in children suggest that opportunity and support for participation in science activities from the earliest levels of schooling are required to maintain interest for students who have already started to develop interest in science and to trigger interest in science for all students.

Opportunities for science instruction. A recent Australian report on students’ participation in and understanding of STEM studies (Tytler, Osborne, Williams, Tytler, & Clark, 2008) focused on the transition from primary to secondary school. The authors identified a number of obstacles to students’ developing interest in science, such as a lack of science taught in Australian primary schools and a lack of confidence of primary teachers in teaching science. These obstacles bear directly on opportunity and support for the development of interest in science. The restricted instructional time devoted to science was documented by Martin, Mullis, and Foy (2007). In 2006, 5% of the instructional time for Australian fourth-grade students was devoted to science, compared with 7% in England, 8% in the United States, and an international average of 8%. There were also wide variations in teacher qualifications, with low levels of science and mathematics background among Australian primary school teachers.

To improve science knowledge and understanding in primary schools, the Australian Academy of Science developed Primary Connections, a teacher professional learning program supported with curriculum resources (see Hackling, Peers, & Prain, 2007; Hackling & Prain, 2008). This program used an inquiry approach emphasizing science literacy to develop investigative skills through studen...