2017 Volume 57 Issue 3 Pages 281-291
For science club activities in lower and upper secondary schools, ongoing exploration activities with fixed themes are conducted. These are important opportunities to foster a love of science in students. One purpose of the present study was to investigate the reality of exploration activities conducted after school and over long school breaks. First, we targeted “student science research presentation workshops” with participating students from private lower and upper secondary schools in Tokyo. We organized and analyzed research reports from 759 lower secondary school students and 1,349 upper secondary schools students presented over 55 years between 1961 and 2015. The results of our analysis showed a recent increase in the number of applicants for physics and chemistry, a decrease in flora and fauna sketches in research reports and in the percentage of sketches on experimental devices, and a rapid increase in the percentage of photographs. Another purpose of this study was to investigate research themes centered on chemistry fields, which are thought to be less influenced by differences in school facilities and the natural environment around each school. We divided chemistry fields into 12 areas and analyzed overviews of each project and the popular points of each, taking into account school type and historical background. In chemistry fields, in addition to research that has traditionally been carried out regarding natural environments, we noted a tendency to select research themes focused on visual changes, such as changes in metal and chemical reactions involving dyeing and color changes.
