It’s the Situation That Matters: Affective Involvement in Context-Oriented Learnin Tasks - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 162

5.3 Design

Fechner ( 2009 ) compared five different context situations (e.g., harmfulness of
detergents) all related to the same chemical content knowledge (acids and bases)
within an inquiry-based learning activity. Students could perform hands-on exper-
iments starting from a problem situation that was embedded into an everyday
context. Situational interest in the topic and intrinsic motivation in the activity of
task was measured after each session and compared to a group that performed the
same tasks embedded within a laboratory situation.
K ¨ lbach

s( 2011 ) study compared different chemistry content areas (water as a
substance and properties of salts) within the same context situation (swimming
lake). Learning from a scaffolded problem-oriented text, students individually
learned the content. Situational interest in the topic of task was measured after
each session and compared to a group that performed the same tasks embedded
within a laboratory situation.
Van Vorst ( 2013 ) concentrated on different characteristics of a context situation
(see above) and developed introductory texts that can be seen as the starting point of
a cbl learning task. Each text could be assigned one combination of the character-
istics (high/low TOPICALITY and EVERYDAY/UNIQUE ). Situational interest in the intro-
ductory text to a potential cbl task was measured for the different texts on the scales
listed in Table 2 .

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5.4 Instruments

Data on student affective responses towards context-based chemistry should
directly be collected by asking students for their responses by either Likert-type
questionnaires or interviews rather than asking for potentially biased teacher
perceptions (Ramsden, 1994 ). According to Bennett et al. ( 2007 ), student responses
should additionally be compared to earlier experiences in a traditional chemistry
class or a control group in order to provide a point of reference. The research
instrument should be discussed with regard to its construct validity by either
triangulating data from questionnaire and interview or performing factor analysis
on quantitative data.
The reported studies used selected scales from the same test instruments on
situational interest (see Table 2 ). Items were mainly retrieved from a study on out-
of-school learning environments (Engeln, 2004 ). All studies used two scales with
items on a four-point Likert scale asking for student situational interest in the task
( After I had read the task, I was very interested in the topic ) and the activity ( Doing
the activity was great fun ). Situational interest in the task was additionally
subdivided into items related to a value- or emotion-oriented valence (see Table 2 ).
Factor analysis was performed in order to ensure construct validity.