Is Scientific Curiosity a Viable Outcome InToday’s Secondary School Science Program?

James Reed CampbellAssistant Professor, Graduate School of Education, University

of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Since 1955 the secondary school science program has received amassive input of information and ideas as numerous teams of scien-tists and science educators on both state and national levels combinedefforts to revamp the admittedly obsolete science programs.1 Unfor-tunately, much of this redevelopment effort was centered at the cog-nitive level without the parallel development and institutionalizationof a wide spectrum of affective outcomes.What is the science program accomplishing in the affective area?

Are science courses nuturing the development of a varied set of in-terests and appreciations? Do our courses foster the development ofproductive attitudes and values? What is being accomplished in thescientific attitude area? Are youngsters systematically taught to beopen-minded and critical, to suspend judgment, to look for cause andeffect relationships, to nuture the growth of their scientific curiosity?

In order to probe the health and well-being of affective outcomes,an analytical study was conducted by this researcher to determine thestatus of scientific curiosity in the secondary school. By singling outone affective outcome and measuring the degree of its development,one may be able to gain some insight into the attainment of affectiveobjectives in the secondary school science area.The specific questions to be investigated were:1. Are secondary school students more curious about science as they proceed

from junior to senior high?2. To what depth will students at both junior and senior high levels be willing

to go to satisfy their curiosity?

To answer these questions, an instrument, The Scientific CuriosityInventory, was constructed within the theoretical contex of Krath-wohTs Affective Domain Toxonomy.2 This taxonomy is a five-levelcontinuum of affective behaviors (See Figure I)3 which is utilized asan organizational model for values, attitudes, appreciations, andinterests. Individual objectives are rank-ordered along the continuumby the level of involvement necessary for their achievement; there-fore, Level 1 behaviors require a student to only attend, while Level 2

* W. A. Thurber, A. T. Collette, Teaching, Science in Today’s Secondary Schools. Boston; AUyn and Bacon,Inc., 1968, p. 42.

2 D. R. Krathwohl, B. S. Bloom, and B. B. Masia, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives the Classification ofEducational Goals, Handbook II: Affective Domain. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1964.

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139

140School Science and Mathematics

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Scientific Curiosity 141

requires both attention and response, and Level 3 requires attention,response, and the development of values. Individual involvement isprogressively increased as higher and higher affective levels are at-tained.The Scientific Curiosity Inventory was limited to the first three

levels and sublevels of KrathwohFs continuum and therefore at-tempted to measure a limited continuum which ranged from awarenessto the development of specific values relating to scientific curiosity.The lowest level of the continuum (1.0) involved the ability of

students to receive information. In many respects this level is closelyrelated to the cognitive domain. The 1.0 sublevels attempted tomeasure the various degrees of attention and interest students wouldgive in obtaining this knowledge. In terms of scientific curiosity, theInventory attempted to measure the degree of attention studentswere willing to devote to such questions as "Why does the earth havemagnetism?^ or "How does a Satellite stay up?’7 etc. In some casesstudents were unwilling even to listen to explanations about thesescientific phenomena. In other cases they would give sustained andcontrolled attention to these topics.The next general level (2.0) involved some response in addition to

attention. At this level students responded either through obedienceor compliance on the lowest level or by voluntarily responding withsatisfaction on a higher level. The Inventory attempted to measurea students willingness to read books, newspapers, or magazine arti-cles to satisfy his curiosity as well as the enjoyment and satisfactionderived from such activities.The third level (3.0) involved the development of values whereby

students could simply accept a specific value or develop a definitepreference for and commitment to these values. The Inventory mea-sured this level by asking students if they frequently sent away toscientific supply companies for specific materials to satisfy theircuriosity, or if they had ever embarked on "rather large readingprograms^ to satisfy their curiosity. Any student engaged in suchactivities would show all three levels of involvement.

In terms of scientific curiosity, the Inventory attempted to measurejust how far along the. hierarchy of behaviors students would bewilling to go to satisfy their curiosity. If they were satisfied simplywith listening to explanations about science topics which arousedtheir curiosity, they exhibited the lowest level of involvement. If theywere willing to respond with some form of action, they possessed ahigher level of curiosity; and if they developed values about theircuriosity, they possessed a much higher level of involvement. Thistheoretical model of organization provided the Inventory with amechanism for investigating the depth with which students de-veloped affective outcomes.

142 School Science and Mathematics

SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY INVENTORYIn constructing this Inventory, specific behaviors relating to scien-

tific curiosity were extracted from the science education litera-ture and integrated with the classified behaviors specified in thetaxonomy. The resulting hierarchy of behaviors was validated by ajury of prominent researchers in the scientific attitude area. Onlybehavioral items which showed an 80% agreement among jurors wereretained and phrased into questions for inclusion in the Inventory.The internal consistency of the Inventory was established by ad-

ministering the initial version (Form A) of the instrument to a heter-ogeneous population and using the results in the calculation of aseries of normalized biserial coefficients of correlation. These r\,

values were used as the discrimination index for the development ofForm B of the instrument. The mean r\, value was .54.The reliability of the instrument was determined by administering

it to 251 students in both urban and suburban settings. The reliabilityof the test was found to be r= .89, and the standard error of measure-ment was calculated to be 1.66.

RESULTSForm A of the Curiosity Inventory was administered to 663 stu-

dents from Grades 7-12 in three suburban school districts adjacentto New York City. The science programs utilized by this sample ofschools were identical at the senior high level where the course offer-ings consisted of PSSC-Physics, CHEM-Chemistry, and BSCS-Biology.The two junior high schools sampled had developed somewhat in-

dividualized science prograns. One school fused elements of the IPS-Physical Science Program with segments of the ESCP-Earth ScienceProgram. In the other school, the program was developed by combin-ing elements of the IME-Physical Science Program with units fromthe experimental version of the revised New York State curriculum.The Inventory included a sufficient number of questions to yieldsubscores at the three domain levels. Class means for junior and seniorhigh schools were determined on each affective level. Figure 2 showsthe differences between the junior and senior high school samples.In all classes the affective domain levels were clearly separated withno overlapping at any grade level. At both grade levels, studentsscored very high on the knowledge-related level (1.0), but approxi-mately 15 per cent lower on the responding level, and more than 34%lower in the development of values related to curiosity.

Of greater importance were the junior and senior high school com-parisons at each affective level. Senior high school students had

Scientific Curiosity 143

higher scores on the lowest level but surprisingly lower levels of in-volvement on the more advanced domain levels. In other words, adistinct crossover between Levels 1 and 2 occurred between thesetwo populations.

Form A�Distribution of Mean Percentages per Item

.70

.60

Percentages ,50

per Item

1.0 2.0 3.0

Affective Domain Level

FIGURE 2

In order statistically to analyze this finding, the more refined FormB test was administered to 566 students in both urban and suburbansettings from Grades 7--12 with proportional representation at thethree major ability levels. The schools sampled in this segment of thestudy were similar to those utilized in the Form A segment of thestudy. The senior high schools offered PSSC-Physics, CHEM-Chem-istry, and BSCS-Biology. Of the two junior high schools sampled,one school had developed a program by incorporating units from theIME-Physical Science Program with a number of units from theexperimental version of the New York State curriculum. The otherschool was a pilot school for the "Time Space and Matter’5 program.The results of this test were the same as those for Form A. Again,Level 1 development was high for both junior and senior high schoolstudents the Level 2 mean was 20% below Level 1, and the Level 3mean was 35% lower than Level 1. In relation to the junior and seniorhigh school comparisons, the results were almost identical with seniorhigh school students scoring higher on Level 1 and substantiallylower on Levels 2 and 3 (see Figure 3). The mean difference betweenthe junior and senior high school students on Level 1 was only .19,but on Level 2 it was 1.52, and on Level 3, 1.67.

In order to establish if these differences were significant, a two-wayanalysis of variance was performed, and the difference between levelsand groups was found to be significant at the .01 level.

Individual t tests were then performed for each junior high meanin relation to each senior high mean. The Level 1 difference was not

144School Science and Mathematics

significant even at the 0.5 level; however, the / tests on Levels 2 and3 did show significant differences at the 0.001 level. Thus the nullhypothesis could not be rejected for Level 1, but was rejected forLevels 2 and 3.The evidence from these studies seems to indicate that the develop-

ment of higher level affective objectives are not being accomplishedto any significant degree in the secondary school. This is particularlytrue at the value level. The results show that students do seem tobecome more aware of what to be curious about as they take moreand more science courses, but unfortunately show lower and lowerlevels of involvement as they take these courses. The net result interms of scientific curiosity is that the science program produces de-clines rather than increased levels of development.

Two-Way Analysis of Variance for Junior andSenior High School Groups in delation to theThree Levels of the Curiosity Inventory

Source ofVariation

Between Groups

Between Levels

Interaction

Within

Totals

Sum ofSquares

402

10907

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402

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255

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FIGURE 4

In order to substantiate further this finding, a longitudinal studywas conducted with one ability level in one of the junior highs sam-

Scientific Curiosity 145

pled in the Form B segment of the study. The low ability level of thejunior high using IME and the experimental New York State Cur-riculum was selected. The sample was expanded to include 10 classes(A7==195) at grades seven to nine. If this group showed substantialdeclines through the course of a single academic year, then it wouldbecome evident that some of the affective differences between juniorand senior high schools were actually declines in this area. The lowachiever designation was determined primarily by removing all stu-dents who did not succeed academically in the regular program andplace them in a homogeneous level more suited to their abilities.The IQ distribution of the sample is shown in Figure 5. The mean

IQ was 99.47.

IQ Distribution According toLorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test

IQ Range

116-121 6

100-115 82

90-99 88

70-89 19

FIGURE 5

Each class was pretested in October, 1967, and post-tested in May,1968, with Form B of the Curiosity Inventory. The results of thissegment of the study verified our expectations with mean declines onlevels (see Figure 6). The last column of Figure 6 concerns the sta-

Distribution of Means

ruriofiitv Mean Level of

Inventory Pro, Post Decline Significance

Total 27.09 24.65 2.44 .01

Level 1 11.23 10.48 .75 Nonsignificant

Level 2 8.92 7.95 .97 .02

Level 3 6.98 6.07 .91 .01

The last column of Figure 6 concerns the statistical significance of the

FIGURE 6

tistical significance of the declines and was determined by a series ofsign tests for paired comparisons.4 The Level 1 decline did not provestatistically significant, but the declines for the whole test and forLevels 2 and 3 did reach significance. These findings coincide with

« Alien L. Edwards, Statistical Mithuds for Behavioral Sciences. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1964.288-291.

146 School Science and Mathematics

the findings reported above for the analytical studies. In these studiessenior high school students did retain higher frequencies on Level 1.0with significantly lower frequencies on Levels 2 and 3. It should beemphasized at this point that the longitudinal study was limited toonly one ability level at one school. Such a limitation does not permitus to generalize these findings to other ability levels in both the juniorand senior high.

DISCUSSIONAs a result of testing 1,229 students from Grades 7-12, it seems

clear that scientific curiosity is not undergoing any substantial de-velopment in today^s secondary school. Approximately 60% of thesestudents did show evidence of the lowest level of involvement. Theywere at least aware of the questions which have stimulated the scien-tific community for centuries and did exhibit some willingness toreceive information. However, only 45% of this sample showed evi-dence of Level 2.0 involvement whereby students voluntarily re-sponded with some form of activity to satisfy their curiosity. Fewerstill exhibited any satisfaction from such activity.The more important 3.0 level involved the development of values.

At this level less than 30% of the students showed any evidence of thedevelopment of values in this affective area. Of course the value levelrepresents the highest expectations of most science programs. Thisis the level on which most of the pious flowery educational objectivesare written and also the level emphasized in most teacher traininginstitutions.The 30% frequency could be viewed as a surprising success since

most teachers largely neglect the systematic development of scientificcuriosity; however, the statistically significant declines in the seniorhigh school samples remove any illusions about this result. Actually,the Form B results showed that the junior high school sample wasmore than 9% above the senior high school group at this level.The senior high school students show much lower levels of curiosity

than their junior high school counterparts, and the results of thelongitudinal study showed that some of these differences (particularlythose involving low achievers), are actually declines in the level ofinvolvement. Certainly, junior high school students do initially bringan enthusiasm to their science courses and do exhibit a willingness toget substantially involved in satisfying their curiosity. However, thisinitial potentiality never materializes for the vast majority of stu-dents. Senior high school students view their education in science asa passive occupation. They may be willing to pay careful attention togain the knowledge necessary for the development of values but areunwilling to incorporate these values into their own value system.

Scientific Curiosity 147

Their education requires them to be primarily passive and attentiveand consequently their development is limited and stifled at this level.If this affective outcome is representative of affective outcomes ingeneral, then the implications of this research go far beyond scientificcuriosity.In 1963 Mallinson implied a similar set of findings in the interest

area as evidenced by the following summary:Data from a great number of studies of interest undertaken at the sixth- andseventh-grade levels indicate that more of these students profess an interest inscience than in any other subject-matter area. Yet, when similar studies havebeen undertaken with ninth-grade students, or with students at the beginning ofthe tenth grade, the evidence shows that fewer students profess interest in sciencethan in any other subject taught at these levels. Consequently, during the junior-high-school years the professed scientific interests of these students seem to de-cline markedly. This generalization is supported by evidence, still tentative,that indicates that students who may elect a science course at the ninth-gradelevel, or courses in some other fields, more frequently elect those ir other fields.5

This summary, although tentative, does supply some confirmatoryevidence that development of affective outcomes in the secondaryschool are just not being accomplished.

Perhaps the only substantial accomplishment of current scienceprograms is in the cognitive area. Science courses have effectivelyinstitutionalized knowledge outcomes with considerable success, butthe fact remains that affective outcomes have not received the sameinterest or attention. A systematic program is needed for their nutureand growth. The affective level is vital if we are to increase thescientific literacy of the average citizen. Curricular revision since1955 was characterized by its cognitive emphasis. The seventiesshould require the institutionalization of a much broader set of objec-tives. At all levels we need to rediscover the affective objectives wehave so long ignored and incorporate them into the very fabric ofscience instruction.

6 George G. Mallinson, "Motivation in Junior High School Science," School Science and Mathematics, LXIII(October, 1963), 551.

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