2022 Volume 44 Issue 2 Pages 29-39
In May 2022, Japanʼs Council for the Creation of Future Education, chaired by the Prime Minister, set a target to increase the proportion of university students majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and other science-based disciplines from 35% to around 50%. With this policy trend emphasizing STEM, it has become a priority to capture the current state of, and issues with, teaching methods and learning outcomes in STEM higher education. Although the Japanese government has been endorsing the replacement of traditional lecture with active learning in higher education for more than ten years, little is known about how successful this endeavor is. In particular, there has been almost no empirical measurement of how widespread active learning is in basic science courses. Furthermore, while some research found that introductory physics courses in Japanese university classrooms had little effect on raising the level of conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics, other basic science courses, such as mathematics and chemistry, also need to be investigated.
On the other hand, internationally, discipline-based education research (DBER) has been producing an overwhelming amount of evidence that demonstrate the advantage of active learning over traditional lecture in terms of enhancing conceptual understanding. Most research concerning this domain tends to treat students as objects; that is, they objectively measure the studentsʼ understanding using concept inventory scores. Relatively less research attention has been devoted to studentsʼ agency as learners and their self-assessment of understanding. Such research has so far produced inconsistent findings, some of which rebut the advantage of active learning, while others support the advantage in line with the objective measurement.
With the above backgrounds, this research has conducted an online survey and collected data from 2,000 graduates and students in STEM and other science-based fields at various universities across Japan. The online questionnaire examined how first- and second-year students enrolled in bachelorʼs degree programs perceived their educational experiences in introductory mathematics, physics, and chemistry courses.
The results indicate that if those courses were taught in active learning formats rather than traditional lecture formats, their self-assessed understanding of each disciplineʼs basic concepts tends to be significantly higher. This tendency is consistent between selective and non-selective institutions. Despite the benefits of active learning, it has been highlighted that traditional lectures continue to dominate basic science courses. This dominance is also independent of degree of university selectivity.
In conclusion, nationally, this paper reveals a persistent dominance of traditional lectures in the basic science courses at Japanese universities. Internationally, based on a nation-wide survey of students and graduates, the paper provides an important piece of new evidence for the argument that active learning is advantageous in terms of self-assessed conceptual understanding.
