An International Comparative Analysis of the Relationship between Students' Instructional Experiences, their Attitudes and their Achievement in Science

抄録

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among students' experiences of teaching activities in science lessons, students' attitudes towards science and their achievement in science. The sample consisted of 105,078 students worldwide who participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003. The students completed a questionnaire and took a science test. We conducted structural equation modeling to estimate and test the hypothesized relationship between students' experiences of ways of teaching, their attitude and their achievement. In addition, after sorting appropriate groups from participating countries/regions, we compared the structural equation model for each group based on the results of the analyses. Under the condition that we do not focus the relevant factors which influence their achievement, except school factors, the results indicate that first, science lessons, including the teaching activity of having students working out problems by themselves, enhanced students' self-concepts for science and improved their science achievement; second, introducing only the teaching activity of having students work out problems by themselves to science lessons was not effective enough for improving students' achievements. This means that bringing in characteristic factors of teaching activities, which were unique for each group of countries/regions, is important.