Relationship between STS approach, scientific literacy, and achievement in biology

Relationship Between STSApproach, Scientific Literacy,and Achievement in Biology

N. M. MBAJIORGUDepartment of Science and Computer Education, Enugu State University of Scienceand Technology, Enugu, Nigeria

A. ALIInstitute of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

Received 11 January 2000; accepted 5 April 2001

ABSTRACT: This study set out to investigate the relationship between STS approach,scientific literacy (SL), and achievement in biology. A quasi-experimental design of thenonequivalent group was employed. Four secondary schools, eight teachers, and 246 stu-dents from Nigeria were involved in the study. Two classes were randomly selected fromeach school and assigned to either the experimental or control group. Two instrumentswere used to collect data: an Achievement Test on Reproduction and Family Planning anda SL Scale. Results showed that there is no relationship between SL and achievement inbiology. The split-wise posttest regression showed a weak positive relationship betweenSL and achievement in biology for the experimental group and a no relationship for thecontrol group. However, STS approach mediated between SL and achievement to effecta slightly stronger significant positive relationship. The slope of SL was greater when wecontrolled for instruction showing that the relationship between SL and achievement is notspurious when instruction is taken into account. We therefore conclude that STS approachmight be affecting other variables in the science classroom that in turn affect achievement inthe sciences. C© 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 87:31–39, 2003; Published online in WileyInterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/sce.10012

INTRODUCTION

The world of the twenty-first century will be shaped by the impact of science and tech-nology (S&T). S&T in the bid to better the lot of man, has created enormous socioscientificproblems. The enthusiasm about S&T being able to solve most of man’s problems waned,leaving behind a level of aversion and antagonism for these two enterprises (Jenkins, 1997).Graubard (1983) opined that science is a mystery for a great number of people and appearsto be largely inaccessible even to men and women who believe themselves educated. Theprevailing atmosphere therefore calls for new goals of science education, which had hithertobeen geared towards production of competent scientists and technologists (Ziman, 1980).These new goals can be summed up as scientific literacy (AAAS, 1989; Anderson, Harty, &Samuel, 1986; Cobern, 1996; Falayajo & Akindehin, 1986; Hurd, 1998; Lederman, 1986;

Correspondence to: N. M. Mbajiorgu; e-mail: [email protected]

C© 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

32 MBAJIORGU AND ALI

Rowe, 1983). Scientific literacy (SL) is the ability of individuals to live satisfactorily andconveniently in a technoscience culture. As defined by Hurd (1998, p. 410), it is “a civiccompetency required for rational thinking about science in relation to personal, social, polit-ical, economic problems and issues that one is likely to meet throughout life.” Thus Botero(1997, p. 204) submits “that access to scientific and technological information and under-standing has become a fundamental component of citizenship in modern societies.” Thisimplies an ability to think critically, solve socioscientific problems, take part in collectivedecision-making, and to communicate effectively in a technoscience culture.

Hurd (1998) traced the cultural roots of SL back to the 1500s, when Francis Bacon calledfor a practical-oriented science education. While this need has spanned 400 years, positivetransformations of school science curricula to meet this need have remained very question-able and in fact absent, up till the 1980s. Literature is replete with practical suggestionsand skills deemed necessary to be included in school curriculum (AAAS, 1989; Aikenhead,1986; Falayajo & Akindehin, 1986; Hurd, 1998; Rubba & Anderson, 1978).

Realizing the shift in the global culture and to achieve SL as well as increase achievementin the sciences, the SL movement defined an approach to school science. This is knownas the Science-Technology-Society (STS) Approach. The term first emerged in 1971 whenGallagher used it in his paper: A Broader Base for Science Teaching (Aikenhead, 1997b).This term has since been greatly articulated by educators and researchers who now employit in the development of curricula. STS emerged primarily as a result of social forces andis therefore seen as reform in science education. It appears that science education using theSTS approach can offer an interdisciplinary knowledge to handle the shift of researchers inthe sciences from being single disciplined to inter- or multidisciplinary (Holbrook, 1992).It therefore breaks down the discipline boundaries as well as provides a context for scienceeducation. Yager (1992, p. 3) argues that

there are no concepts and/or processes unique to STS: instead, STS provides a settingand a reason for considering basic science and technology concepts and processes. STSmeans determining and experiencing ways that these basic ideas and skills can be observedin society. STS means focusing on real-world problems which have science and technol-ogy components from students’ perspectives, instead of starting with basic concepts andprocesses.

He concluded by giving the characteristics of the golas, curriculum, and instructions of theSTS approach as identified by US Project Synthesis.

The major goals of the STS approach are to develop decision-making (Bingle &Gasket, 1994) and problem-solving skills as well as autonomy and capacity for com-munication when faced with specific situations (Fourez, 1995). STS educators seek tosupport a student’s efforts to make sense out of his natural world (science), his artificialworld (technology), and his social world (society) (Aikenhead, 1997a). Aikenhead wentfurther to propose two aspects of STS, lesson content and teaching methods. The meth-ods are supportive of constructivist strategies (Pederson, 1992). Rather than being trans-misive, they are persuasive and argumentative. These include simulations, debates, roleplay, problem-solving, discussions, etc. Aikenhead (1986) suggested the content of STSeducation to include the following: (i) social issues internal to the scientific community(epistemology, history, and sociology of science, etc.), (ii) social aspects external to thescientific community (socioscientific problems, e.g. overpopulation, nuclear reaction, etc.),and (iii) science discipline content (biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science). WhileBybee and Mau (1986) identified a number of socioscientific problems as important STSthemes/content. These three aspects are to be integrated in a science classroom in different

STS, SCIENCE LITERACY AND ACHIEVEMENT 33

ways and to different degrees by the science teacher. Ziman (1980) identified differentapproaches to STS education. These include making “valid science” relevant, the vocationalapproach, the philosophical approach, the sociological approach, and the problematic ap-proach. On the other hand Aikenhead (1986) proposed an eight-category structure for theSTS approach: motivation through STS content, casual infusion of STS content, purposefulinfusion of STS content, single discipline through STS content, and science through STScontent (categories 5–8).

From the foregoing discussion two approaches can be identified, the single-disciplineapproach and the multidisciplinary approach. In the former, STS content is infused into asingle discipline of science (biology, chemistry, physics, or earth science). In the latter, STScontent is the focus and science concepts and processes deriving from the STS content aretaught. Educators are, however, not very comfortable with the multidisciplinary approachfearing that students may not learn as much science content as they should and that theteaching of science through socioscientific problems may be elusive (Jenkins, 1997). Thisfear may not be warranted given that achievement in the sciences has been low.

Aggregate of factors affect achievement and participation in the sciences. These includecurricular factors, worldview, and socioeconomic considerations. Present advocacy is formaking science education relevant to the worldview of the learner (Aikenhead, 1986, 1996,1997c; Cobern, 1996; Davis et al., 1993; Hawkins & Peas, 1987; Jegede, 1997; Louden,Cowan, & Wallace, 1994). This is one of the issues that STS science has tried to address.It is therefore believed that STS approach in addition to increasing SL will also increaseachievement in the sciences. This study therefore sets out to investigate the relationshipbetween STS approach, SL, and achievement in biology.

PURPOSE

Science educators have wondered if the STS approach can in fact justify all its claims(Myers, 1992; Penick, 1992; Solomon, 1992; Varrella, 1992; Yager & Lutz, 1995; Zehr,1992). A number of studies have been done (Banerjee & Yager, 1992; Binadja, 1992;Solbes & Vilches, 1997) which found that the STS approach enhances different variablesof the learning process. In this study, we are not seeking the effect of the STS approachon any variable, but how it relates with achievement and wheather it interacts with SL toeffect a change in achievement. In other words, we seek answers to the following questions:(1) Does any relationship exist between SL and achievement in biology? (2) Does instructionusing the STS approach mediate this relationship?

PROCEDURE

A quasi-experimental design of the nonequivalent group was employed. This is becausethe investigation was carried out during a normal school term and intact classes were used.The intact classes were randomly assigned to one of the two groups: the experimental orcontrol group. To create equivalence of the students, a pretest was administered.

The sample consisted of 16- to 18-year olds in their final term of the second year ofsenior secondary education in Nigeria. They therefore had 2 years of science educationand, if properly instructed, were expected to be scientifically literate. The students wereselected from four secondary schools. For each school selected, two classes were randomlychosen. All the schools met the basic assumption that intact classes were composed ofvarious categories of students. To avoid teacher effect, each school had an experimentaland a control group. The groups in all the schools were taught with the same lesson notesprepared by the researchers. The teachers also went through a 2 day workshop on STS


pedagogical approach and philosophy. The lesson notes were also used for microteaching.Altogether four teachers, and eight classes of 246 students participated in the study.

Two testing instruments were used to test the outcome of the treatment. These werean Achievement Test on Reproduction and Family Planning (ATRFP) and a ScientificLiteracy Scale (SLS). ATRFP is a 20-item multiple-choice test developed to test the stu-dents’ achievement before and after the treatment period. SLS is adapted from Views-On-Science-Technology-Society, an instrument developed by Aikenhead, Ryan, and Fleming(1992; Ryan, 1992). SLS covers three aspects of SL: nature of science, STS interactions,and a basic biology concept—cell. These were chosen on the basis that they were accom-modated by topics chosen for coverage in this study. The topics were human reproductionand family planning.

ATRFP was given to five biology teachers and two educators for face validity. To ensurecontent validity, a table of specifications was developed to reflect the topics chosen andthe performance objectives as stated in the lesson notes. A pilot testing which involvedone school (57 students and their teacher) was carried out. Twenty items were eventuallyselected after consideration of the difficulty and discrimination indices. The distribution ofthe items was as follows: seven at the knowledge level, six at the comprehension level, andseven at the higher-order level. This is following Bloom’s hierarchical order of cognition.

Thirty-one questions were selected from VOSTS and nine items were generated to coverthe basic science concept, the cell. All references to Canada were changed to Nigeria foritems selected from VOSTS before the instrument was sent out for validation. SLS wasthen given to six science educators. Out of the 40 questions pilot-tested, 5 were dropped,and minor modifications were made, e.g., fields was changed to subjects in VOSTS item10111. The introductory statement before the alternatives (“But mainly”) was also struckoff. Twenty items were eventually selected given the time available for testing (see Appendixfor SLS item stems).

The Cronbach Alpha reliability model was used to determine the internal consistency ofthe instruments. For ATRFP it gave a coefficient of 0.6 and for SLS 0.71. The coefficientof stability determined by the Pearson Product Moment model gave 0.61 for ATRFP and0.84 for SLS. Considering STS curricular methodology, two topics were selected fromthe senior secondary school biology core curriculum. These were human reproduction andfamily planning. We limited the work to STS content. Consequently, the control group wastaught these two topics by using the traditional approach while for the experimental group,a number of social issues internal and external to the scientific community were infused atthe category three of Aikenhead’s eight-category scheme. With these, an STS package wasdeveloped with which the teachers were trained.

The data generated were subjected to regression analysis to identify patterns in the rela-tionship. For ATRFP, every right response attracted a score of 1 while all wrong responseswere assigned 0. Thus the highest score that could be obtained on ATRFP was 20 andthe lowest 0. For SLS, a three-category scoring scheme: Realistic/Has Merit/Naı̈ve wasestablished and point values of 3/2/1 were assigned to the categories (Rubba, Bradford, &Harkness, 1996). If the alternative chosen is in line with current epistemological views itis realistic, has merit if it holds a legitimate but not fully epistemological view, and naı̈vewhen contrary to current epistemological views. Thus the highest score obtainable on SLSis 60 and the lowest 20.

RESULTS

Two null hypotheses were tested in this study. The first null hypothesis is that there isno significant relationship between SL and achievement in biology. The second is that STS


TABLE 1Regression of Achievement in Biology on SL

Source of Sum of MeanVariance Squares DF Square F Significance

Regression 0.747 1 0.747 0.227 NSResidual 802.242 244 3.288

N = 246, P < 0.05, Critical F = 3.84, R= 0.03051, R 2 = 0.00093, Adjusted R 2 =−0.00316, Standard error = 1.81325.

approach will not mediate significantly the relationship between SL and achievement inbiology.

Results as presented in Table 1 indicate a no relationship between SL and achievementin biology prior to instruction. The analysis of the data split-wise (not presented here intabular form) also gives the same result. The F value is 0.23 while the value required forsignificance is 3.84 at 1 and 244 degrees of freedom. The R2 or coefficient of determinationof 0.0009 shows that the variance in achievement cannot be explained by SL. However,Table 2 reveals a positive relationship between SL and achievement in biology.

The obtained F value is 16.54 while the value required for significance is 3.84 at 2 and243 degrees of freedom. The second null hypothesis is therefore rejected as stated. The split-wise analysis of data of the posttest data (not presented here) shows that after instruction theexperimental group recorded a significant positive relationship. This relationship is howeverweak, only 4.5% of the variance is explained by SL. There is still a no relationship for thecontrol group. The adjusted R2 of 0.12 (Table 2) shows that SL and instruction togetherexplain 12% of the variance in achievement in biology. The slope of SL was greater whenwe controlled for instruction showing that the relationship between SL and achievement isnot spurious when instruction is taken into account.

DISCUSSION

This study sought to determine the relationship between SL and achievement in biology.In this regard, achievement in biology was regressed on SL. It would appear that ordinarily,the level of SL has no effect on achievement in biology. The finding of Aghadiuno (1997)that students’ understanding of the nature of science made a non-significant contributionto their achievement in chemistry at 0.01 level of significance, does support the presentassertion. The theory of the “attentive public” may explain this claim. SL and the natureof science (which is an aspect of SL) may be attained by a nonscientist and anyone whois attentive to scientific issues and debates in the society (Arons, 1993; Lee, 1997). Manyresearchers have proved that students’ perception of the scientist and the scientific enterprise

TABLE 2Regression of Achievement in Biology on SL with Instructional Approach

Source of Sum of MeanVariance Squares DF Square F Significance

Regression 109.137 2 54.569 16.54 NSResidual 801.703 243 3.299

N = 246, P < 0.05, Critical F = 3.84, R= 0.34615, R 2 = 0.11982, Adjusted R 2 =0.111258, Standard error = 1.81637.


are gained mostly from the mass media. It follows that anyone may attain SL without havinga commensurate knowledge of science concepts. On the other hand, a student may attaina high level of understanding of scientific concepts without having a good understandingof the processes involved in science knowledge generation or the interaction of science,technology, and society.

When another factor, the STS approach was introduced, a significant positive relationshipwas noticed. For the experimental group, about 5% of the variation in achievement in biologywas explained by the level of Scientific Literacy. The positive relationship is however weak.The result reveals that for every 1 unit rise in SL, a student’s achievement in biology willincrease by 0.21. It would appear that STS approach mediated the relationship between SLand achievement in biology.

The interaction effect is even stronger. SL and instruction together explain about 12%of the variance of achievement in biology. Though this is a slope-dummy variable type ofinteraction (Hamilton, 1990), the result indicates that the effects of SL on achievement in bi-ology are different for experimental- and control-group students. It would seem that the STSapproach affects other variables (e.g. interest, attitude) that in turn affects achievement in bi-ology. Banerjee and Yager (1992) and Finson and Enochs (1987) found that students developpositive perceptions concerning their science classes, science teachers, the nature of science,and careers in science while Binadja (1992) found a better development of science processskills when taught with a focus on STS. If as claimed by these researchers, STS fosters theseattributes, these may in turn increase achievement and may explain the result of this study.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this study have obvious implications for science education. The goal ofscience for all (Rutherford, 1997) can be attained. This is because traditionally, educationis seen as the vehicle for transmission of culture. If it is agreed that the culture of the globalvillage is tilting toward being scientific, and that SL has become a fundamental componentof citizenship, this study then becomes a buoy for our hopes. It “reaffirms the efficacy ofinstruction as a potent tool for attitude and behaviour change” (Jegede & Okebukola, 1991,p. 282). It therefore challenges educators to develop curricula, which is in line with the STSapproach. This is by no means an easy task. It implies the retraining of secondary schoolteachers and production of new textbooks, teaching materials, as well as other teachingaids (Bybee, 1987). The requirements may be daunting, however this may hold the key toa relevant school science for the twenty-first century.

APPENDIX

1. Defining science is difficult because science is complex and does many things.2. Defining what technology is can cause difficulties beacuse technology does many

things in Nigeria.3. Science and technology are closely related to each other.4. Even when scientific investigations are done correctly, the knowledge that scientists

discover from these investigations may change in the future.5. Many scientific models used in research laboratories (such as the model of heat the

neurone DNA or the atom) are copies of reality.6. A country’s politics affect that country’s scientists. This happens because scientists

are very much a part of a country’s society (i.e. scientists are not isolated from theirsociety).


7. Some cultures have a particular viewpoint on nature and man. Scientists and scientificactivities are influenced by the ethical views of the culture where the work is done.

8. Within Nigeria, there are groups of people who feel strongly in favor of or stronglyagainst some research fields. Science and technology project are influenced by thesespecial interest groups/such as environmentalists, religious organizations, and animalrights people.

9. Scientists and engineers should be the ones to decide what types of energy Nigeriawill use in the future (e.g., nuclear, hydro, solar, or coal burning) because scientistsand engineers are the people who know the facts best.

10. Science and technology offer a great deal of help to resolve social problems. Theseproblems could use new innovations from technology.

11. In your daily life, knowledge of science and technology helps you personally solvepractical problems (e.g., getting a car out of a mud-puddle, looking or caring for a pet).

12. Technological developments can be controlled by citizens.13. When developing new theories or laws, scientists need to make certain assumptions

about nature (for example, matter is made up of atoms). These assumptions must betrue in order for science to progress properly.

14. Scientists should NOT make errors in their work because errors slow the advance ofscience.

15. Biologists believe that the cell is important because it is the basis of all life.16. All life is derived from a cell because all living things are made up of cells. The Iroko

tree, the elephant, and amoeba are therefore all living.17. Biologists believe that all living things move.18. Both the sperm and the ovum are cells.19. The sperm and ovum cannot be seen with the naked eye. But amoeba can be seen as

a speck and bird egg is large enough to be seen and even eaten. The sperm and ovumare therefore cells while the bird egg is not.

20. The sperm and ovum are gametes while amoeba is a free-living organism. Therefore,amoeba is not a cell.

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Documents

Relationship between STS approach, scientific literacy, and achievement in biology