Abstract
Research findings indicate that the transition from primary to secondary school involves changes in science teaching and might be a crucial interface for students’ interest development in science and especially in physics. In order to longitudinally describe (1) the changes in physics-related instruction from the students’ perspective as well as (2) the changes in their physics-related interests, the study presented here tracks German students over the key period of ages 10–14. For this purpose, 348 students could be annually surveyed from fourth grade in primary school (av. age 10.31 years) to seventh grade in secondary school (av. age 13.55 years). Variance analyses of the longitudinal data (repeated-measures ANOVAS) confirm that the students’ physics-related interests drop after school transition. Furthermore, the students perceived significant declines in various aspects of the quality of physics-related instruction when they entered secondary school. Gender differences could be identified in some areas.
This book chapter corresponds to the German article: Pollmeier, K., Walper, L. M., Lange, K., Kleickmann, T., & Möller, K. (2014). Vom Sachunterricht zum Fachunterricht – Physikbezogener Unterricht und Interessen im Übergang von der Primar- zur Sekundarstufe. Zeitschrift für Grundschulforschung, 7(2), 129–145. The copyright for the German article remains with Zeitschrift für Grundschulforschung. Reprinted by courtesy of Klinkhardt Verlag. The book chapter was modified for the international audience.
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Notes
- 1.
‘PLUS’ is a German abbreviation for ‘Professionswissen von Lehrkraften, naturwissenschaftlicher Unterricht und Zielerreichung im Übergang von der Primar- zur Sekundarstufe’, meaning ‘Students’ transition from primary into secondary school – professional knowledge of teachers, science instruction and student outcomes in science’. The PLUS project was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ‘DFG’) and is embedded within the DFG research group ‘nwu Essen’ (abbreviated from the German ‘Naturwissenschaftlicher Unterricht’, meaning ‘science teaching’).
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Walper, L.M., Pollmeier, K., Lange, K., Kleickmann, T., Möller, K. (2016). From General Science Teaching to Discipline-Specific Science Teaching: Physics Instruction and Students’ Subject-Related Interest Levels During the Transition from Primary to Secondary School. In: Papadouris, N., Hadjigeorgiou, A., Constantinou, C. (eds) Insights from Research in Science Teaching and Learning. Contributions from Science Education Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20074-3_18
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