Chemistry Reference
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chemicals. In our study, similar results can be found on the emotional scale within
the area of traffic where male students show significantly higher interest.
Although students knew that the situation was supposed to be subject of their
chemistry class, they rated it less positively if the items explicitly asked them for
their interest if chemistry content knowledge was to be acquired by means of these
situations.
This result can be seen as a hint that interest in a task is both influenced by the
situation provided to students, general individual interest with regard to the under-
lying chemistry content knowledge, and interest in the activity of learning content
knowledge. Thinking the opposite way around, content knowledge might be judged
more interesting if perceived through the lens of an attractive situation. Hence, the
potential to influence learning in a positive way by incorporating interesting
situations into a learning task should be high if the underlying content knowledge
is regarded as unattractive.
5.6 Results: Considerations of Content Knowledge
and Interest
If studies on interest in chemistry are considered, students generally show low
interest in the subject and their chemistry classes (Osborne et al.,
2003
). On the
other hand, the low performance of students in chemistry or science in comparative
large-scale assessments makes it seem likely that low performance might be caused
by low interest levels. Students do not seem to reach an adequate motivational state
to be open to learning chemical concepts. This makes a more detailed look not only
at different situations but also at different aspects of content knowledge (e.g.,
properties of salts) necessary. As mentioned before, the need to introduce cbl
becomes particularly apparent if the underlying content knowledge is not interest-
ing at all.
In our second study, this interaction between interest in situation-related vs. -
content-related elements becomes evident. As can be seen in Fig.
7
, even students in
the laboratory group show relatively high interest levels if they learn within the
content area of “water as a substance” rather than “properties of salts.”
While both groups show similar situational interest levels within the situation of
the swimming lake, students prefer the contents
water
rather than
salts
in the
laboratory environment. This may be explained by the fact that water could also
be assigned a high degree of the characteristic of
RELATEDNESS OF EVERYDAY LIFE
.
Although being confronted with the liquid in a laboratory environment, students
seem to be able to transfer its significance from their everyday life. Although salts
also play a significant role in our everyday life, students estimate the content-related
relevance of water and its property high in both groups whereas salts and their
solubility is only judged relevant
in the real-life context group (K¨ lbach &
Sumfleth,
2013
).
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