High school students' situational engagement associated with scientific practices in designed science learning situations

Abstract

This study seeks to understand how different scientific practices in high school science classrooms are associated with student situational engagement. In this study, situational engagement is conceptualized as the balance between skills, interest, and challenge when the reported experiences are all high. In this study, data on situational engagement were collected using the experience sampling method (ESM) from 142 students in southern Michigan (the United States), resulting 993 ESM responses, and 133 students in southern Finland, resulting 1,351 responses. In both countries, scientific practices related to developing models and constructing explanations were associated with higher student situational engagement than other practices. In southern Finland, using a model was also associated with a high level of student situational engagement. The results indicate that students may experience situational engagement more often in science classrooms that use models than those that do not employ such practices. Thus, scientific practices related to models should be used frequently in science classrooms to situationally engage students while learning science.