Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

High school science teachers: Make it relevant

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

In this week’s issue of Science, Chris Huelleman and Judith Harackiewicz argue¹ that making science relevant lends a big boost to high school students with low expectations of themselves.

In a controlled study, they passed out textbooks to 9th grade science students from a small city in the Midwest.  One set of books had questions that asked an experimental group of  students to write essays about how the material was relevant to their lives.  The other (control) set of textbooks asked students to write essays simply summarizing the material.

Furthermore, they gave students a survey at the beginning of the semester to assess whether students had high or low expectations for success in the course.

The team found that, for the low-expectations students, connecting the material to their lives led to a significant improvement in interest and grades over the semester.  There was no difference for students with high expectations.  In fact, the students with low expectations who connected the course material to their lives had the highest average second quarter grades among all students.

Bottom line:  For high achievers, taking extra steps to make science relevant may not matter as much as it does for students with low expectations or self esteem.

¹Hulleman, C.S.  and J.M. Harackiewicz (2009) Science 1326: 1410-1412.

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