Research in Science Education, 1994, 24, 156-165

STUDENT BELIEFS AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: DEVELOPING A SURVEY OF FACTORS RELATED TO CONCEPTUAL CHANGE.

Mary Hanrahan Queensland University of Technology

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a model for the type of classroom environment believed to facilitate scientific conceptual change. A survey based on this model contains items about students' motivational beliefs, their study approach and their perceptions of their teacher's actions and learning goal orientation. Results obtained from factor analyses, correlations and analyses of variance, based on responses from 113 students, suggest that an empowering interpersonal teacher-student relationship is related to a deep approach to learning, a positive attitude to science, and positive self-efficacy beliefs, and may be increased by a constructivist approach to teaching.

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the problem of alternative frameworks became a live issue in the science education community, researchers have been asking the question: How can teachers help students learn science so that they integrate new science leaminEj into the conceptual frameworks they use in everyday life? A rational constructivist or generative approach (Posner, Strike,. Hewson & Gertzog, 1982; Cosgrove & Osborne, 1985), especially with an emphasis on 'metalearning' 0Nhite & Gunstone, 1989) has gone a long way towards solving the problem. But this "cold," rational approach (Pintrich, Marx & Boyle, 1993) depends on students becoming deeply cognitively engaged and does not necessarily manage the affective aspects of learning.

Pintrich et aL (1993) proposed a model of conceptual change learning. It linked the types of tasks set, the authority structures, the evaluation structures, classroom management, teacher modelling and teacher scaffolding with motivational and cognitive factors considered necessary for the conditions Posner et al. (1982) proposed as prerequisites for conceptual change (dissatisfaction with prior conceptions, and new conceptions being seen as intelligible, plausible and fruitful). Pintrich et al. claimed that these classroom factors all influenced the quality of learning by modifying students' expectancy and value beliefs. Many other education researchers have found'results consistent with this model but some have added new features or new emphases.

The conceptual change learning environment

I am proposing a new explanatory model of an ideal conceptual change learning environment which relates teacher actions to implied teacher beliefs and likely related student beliefs and actions (see Table 1). The 'Teacher Actions' column lists the characteristics-of learning environments which have been found by many recent researchers (see below) to have the most effect on cognitive and motivational factors believed to enhance a deep approach to learning. In general, these classrooms, take a constructivist approach to learning and are more likely to be student-centred with a mastery (as opposed to a 'work') goal orientation (Ames & Archer, 1985; Roth et al., 1992). Teachers in these learning environments are more likely to allow students to assume responsibility progressively for their own learning, and are more likely to provide opportunities for regular student reflection on thinking and learning (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989; Blumenfeld, Mergendoller & Puro, 1992; Roth et al., 1992).

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TABLE 1

ENCULTURATION MODEL FOR AN IDEAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT, RELATING TEACHER AND STUDENT ACTIONS TO PROJECTED STUDENT BELIEFS

TEACHER ACTIONS

Activating prior learning and personal InvoLvement; setting authentic tasks; asking questions about understanding; elaborating on new concepts; getting students to plan, carry out and evaluate activities; treating mistakes as positive; providing a safe environment for risk- taking; sharing control of learning and talking about learning.

Encouraging participation by all students, and listening attentively to them; communicating warmth, empathy and enthusiasm; exercising control with empathy; using small and large group discussion.

INTERVENING STUDENT BELIEFS

IMPLICIT SELF-TALK MESSAGE

Related to Learning

Student understanding takes priority; new learning must be accommodated Into prior learning which takes time and a cooperative setting; learning and moUvatlon are related; student autonomy, learning to learn, broad goals for learning are all Impodant.

Learning science is about working out my own Ideas about the world, and It takes time. Science Is about explaining and jusUfylng Ideas to others. My learning Is under my control, and learning how to learn ts part of successful learning. Science Is about life.

Related to Students

All s~udents have ability; they and their Ideas are worthy of respect; everyone Is an Impodant part of the group.

I have the ability to understand science. My Ideas count. I am a worthwhile person whose concerns will be respected. I need not fear humiliation here.

Related to Teacher Dependence

Structuring tasks and using modelling to equip students to progress towards independence; guiding students' thinking for tasks they find difficult; facilitating interaction between students.

When tasks have been well explained and modelled, students cart complete higher as well as lower order tasks successfully, with a minimum of teacher help.

I/Our group can do science without relying too much on the teacher. The tasks are challenging but achievable.

STUDENT ACTIONS

Admitting and dealing with conceptual conflict; persisting with difficult new learning; seeing practical work as testing Ideas; reflecting on and discussing Ideas; self-regulating own learning; taking dsks.

Becoming engaged In activities; asldng and answering questions; persisting with tasks; speaking and listening In group discussion

Undertaking given tasks willingly, reporting more scientific self- efficacy, and more positive aflltudes towards science.

Just as importantly, such conceptual change learning environments are seen as being more likely to provide socio-emotional support in a "non-threatening learning environment" (Watts & Bentley, 1987), and motivational beliefs are usually seen as being crucial rather than peripheral (Pintrich et al., 1993; Roth et al., 1992). Consequently each student's learning is respected and serves to contribute to the more communal construction of meaning. In this way new learning is framed in a larger context which is culturally meaningful to the student (Blumenfeld et al., 1992; Collins et al., 1989; Roth et al., 1992).

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Learning environments, however, are not merely the sum of teacher behaviours. Rather, they are a dynamic interaction between the teacher and students, based on their interpretations of each other's actions. Thus the beliefs assumed to underlie these actions are a necessary part of a model linking teacher actions to student learning (see Table 1).

Teacher and student actions associated with conceptual change. A brief summary of the findings relating to teacher actions is presented in the first column of Table 1 and student actions believed to be related to them are presented in the last column. These actions are grouped according to whether they are believed to affect students' beliefs about learning, their beliefs about themselves as students, or their beliefs about how much they need to depend on the teacher. However, since research on student learning suggests that it is not teacher behaviours per se that affect the students' actions but rather how students interpret them (Wittrock, 1986/1990), two columns have been added to explain student interpretations which might explain how the teacher actions influence the student actions.

Student beliefs associated with conceptual change. Congruent teacher beliefs may be crucial to the success of particular teaching methods, perhaps because of the implicit messages conveyed by the totality of a teacher's actions (Combs, 1984). When implicit and explicit messages are in conflict, implicit messages may have more impact than explicit messages (Argyle, 1975). Hence such messages are thought to be important and the second column of Table 1 suggests teacher beliefs that students may infer from their observations of teacher actions.

Intervening between the implicit (teacher) messages column and the student actions column is a column presenting student beliefs--their beliefs about learning, their beliefs about themselves and their beliefs about the domain. It is suggested that these motivational beliefs may be influenced by or at least be reinforced by their interpretations of teacher behaviour (i.e., the implicit messages) and consequently may mediate student actions.

Investigatinq the relationship between student beliefs and the learnin.q environment

The various relationships asserted here between motivational beliefs, cognitive engagement and learning environment factors have all been recorded previously in one form or another in a range of domains. Various methods have been used to investigate them, including generalised questionnaires (Ames & Archer, 1988; Blumenfeld et al., 1992; Grolnick & Ryan, 1987; Pintrich et al., 1993).

When factor analysed, questionnaires or surveys can provide indications of constructs which tend to be significant in" the conceptual frameworks of a group of respondents, by grouping items which tend to be correlated for the individuals within the group. Responses to items on questionnaires-and therefore the resultant factors--are most likely to be meaningful when directed at a specific rather than a general context. Henc~ the relationship between factors believed to be important for conceptuz:l change I~.m.i~g in science will be easiest to interpret with a scale specific to the science classroom.

Why a new science learninq environment scale?

As part of an in-depth study of the interrelationships between the science learning environment, students' motivational beliefs and their level of cognitive engagement, I wanted to administer a personalised learning environment questionnaire. I wanted it to include items to measure perceptions of all three factors, and particularly to include items designed to measure the extent to which students perceived that they were encouraged to believe personal understanding was important, and the extent to which it was safe to express their

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own ideas. Current learning environment scales designed to measure student perceptions of teacher interpersonal behaviour, such as the Questionnaire of Teacher Interaction (Wubbels, 1993) and some scales of the Individualised Classroom Environment Questionnaire (Fraser, 1990), did not meet these specific requirements.

On the other hand, critical constructivist learning environment scales, such as the Classroom Environment Survey (Tobin, 1993), and the Revised Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (Rev. CLES; Taylor, Fraser & White, 1994), which did deal with constructivist issues and empowerment, did not explicitly address the interpersonal relationship between the teacher and student. What was needed was a new scale which included items designed to measure students' interpretations of the relevant interpersonal factors, their interl~retations of other constructivist learning environment factors, and their perceptions of their own learning approach. The relevant a priori categories which did not seem to have a significant place in other surveys included the perceived learning goal orientation of the class, the epistemological beliefs of the students, and students' perceptions of teacher support for autonomy, of their own personal empowerment, of the level of their cognitive engagement, and of the level of challenge of tasks set.

METHOD

Subiects

Respondents were 113 students from six science practical workshop groups of a typical primary teaching preservice class at a Queensland University. The students participated voluntarily in the research. (See Watters, Ginns, Neumann & Schweitzer, 1994, for more details of the larger research project on self-efficacy in which this study was situated.)

Procedure

All groups completed the following three surveys at the end of the semester in their final practical class. The Survey of Apparent Learning Goal Orientation (SALGO) was developed to be used as a survey measure with this particular class, from items based on the conceptual change environment model as represented in Table 1, but leaving out items which were conceptually similar to those in scales being measured by the Revised CLES which was being administered on the same occasion (see below). The three cognitive engagement items were adapted from the Science Activity Survey (Meece, Blumenfeld & Hoyle, 1988). For this initial trial, SALGO was limited to 20 items by time constraints and was scored using a five- point Likert type scale of agreement-disagreement. The Revised Constructivist Learning Environment Scale (Rev. CLES-Science) included five scales, and an added attitude scale (Taylor et al., 1994). It had 42 items in all and a five-point Likert type frequency scale. The Science Teacher Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI-B, Riggs & Enochs, 1990) had two scales, a personal science teaching efficacy scale and a science teaching outcome expectancy scale. It consisted of 23 items, and was scored on a five-point Likert scale of agreement-disagreement.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Factor analysis

Factorability of the data. Factorability of the correlation matrix for the SALGO Was found to be highly satisfactory (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling = 0.82, Bartlett's test of sphericity significant at p< =0.00001).

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Choice of factor solution. On the basis of the size of the eigenvalues obtained as part of an initial run using principal components extraction, a six factor solution was the first solution considered, since there were six factors with an eigenvalue greater than one. However the scree test (Cattell, 1966, cited in Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989) produced by this initial run indicated that a single factor solution should also be considered, since there was a noticeable drop in size of eigenvalues between the first and second factor and the rest could reasonably have been interpreted as a scree.

With the single factor solution, the single factor accounted for 26.7% of the variance. All variables loaded on it (the lowest correlation at r = 0.28). Since it included all of the a priori factors, it was labelled a Conceptual Change Learning Environment factor. (The positive pole seemed to represent the kind of features Roth et al., 1992, describe as "a conceptual change science learning community", and the negative pole those of the "work-oriented classroom'.) Since it was composed of functionally different items, the six-factor solution was examined to see whether meaningful subscales would emerge.

TABLE 2

DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION FOR THE SCALES ON THE SURVEY OF APPARENT LEARNING GOAL ORIENTATION

SCALE NAME DESCRIPTION SAMPLE ITEMS ALPHA

PERSONAL EMPOWERMENT (5 items)

TEACHER SUPPORT FOR AUTONOMY IN THINKING (4 items)

The extent to which the teacher in this class is perceived as showing regard for the student.

Extent to which the student feels free to express personal thinking about scientific concepts.

* In this class the teacher 0.78 would rather you gave the approved answer than say what you really think. (-)

* Our teacher sometimes 0.72 gets our class to discuss whether an answer seems reasonable to us or not.

DEEP ~,PPROACH Extent to which student * Learning science is 0.73 TO LEARNING believes he /she must about working out my (4 items) actively construct own own ideas.

knowledge.

Note. (-) means the i tem was reverse coded.

The six-factor solution accounted for 48.4% of the variability and, using a cut-off of 0.4, accounted for all of the items. When Ioadings of greater than 0.4 were taken into account a relatively simple structure was evident. The first three factors were reduced to items which remained stable over different rotations, and alpha reliability values for these were 0.78, 0.72 and 0.73, respectively, which was satisfactory especially given the low number of items of each factor (5, 4 and 4 respectively). The remaining factors, although interpretable, had too few intercorrelated items to be reliable, and were disregarded for purposes of interpretation in this case. The factors were clearly interpretable, and the following factors or scales are

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therefore proposed and sample items are presented in Table 2). The first factor clearly represented Personal Empowerment (PE), the extent to which the student believed the teacher treated him or her with respect as a person and would not to take advantage of the power differential inherent in the class situation to coerce or humiliate the student. The second factor would seem to represent Teacher Support for Autonomy in Thinking (TSAT) or the extent to which the student believed he or she had permission in this class to formulate and express personal understandings of scientific concepts, The third factor combines epistemological belief items with cognitive engagement items to represent a Deep Approach to Learning,

Construct validity

Since one of the original purposes of the construction of the SALGO was to investigate factors believed to be an important part of a successful constructivist learning environment but which had little place in existing constructivist learning environment scales, (unweighted) factor scores were used to determine intercorrelations among scales and correlations with other variables measured (Table 3).

TABLE 3 CORRELATIONS: SALGO SUB-SCALES WITH OTHER FACTORS

pE I TSAT 1 DAL 1

Teacher Support for Autonomy in Thinking 0.56 "'~ 1.00 0.49 ~ Deep Approach to Learning 0.56"'" 0.49"'" 1.00

Revised CLES Personal Relevance 0.33"'" 0.40"" 0.32" Scientific Uncertainty 0.23" 0.23" 0.33-" Critical Voice 0.32"" 0.41 " " 0.26"" Shared Control 0.08 0.41 "'" 0.09 Student Negotiation 0.45"'" 0.47"" 0.33"'"

Attitude to Science 0.44"'" 0.40"" 0.45"'"

STEBI-B (Self-Efficacy) Personal Science Teaching 0.36"'" 0.22" 0.41"" Science Teaching Outcome 0.31"" 0.32"" 0.23"

PE = Personal Empowerment; TSAT = Teacher Support for Autonomy in Thinking; DAL = Deep Approach to Learning. * = p<0.05; ** = p<0.01; * * * = p<0.001.

The SALGO scales had only moderate intercorrelations with each other and so are usefully considered as separate factors. The CLES scales were related to the three SALGO scales but at approximately the same low to moderate level of correlations as they had among themselves (0.20 - 0.55), which demonstrates that the two sets of learning environment factors together contain eight related but distinct factors, as they presented in this context.

All three SALGO scales also had moderate correlations with the CLES science attitude scale, which is notable since anything that may improve students' attitudes to learning science is of interest; and low to moderate correlations with the self-efficacy measures, which is not so surprising, since the course was not directly related to the efficacy measure (the course was a science foundations course, and the self-efficacy was related to teaching science).

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Criterion validity of the scales

While the Revised CLES (Taylor et al., 1994) and the CES (Tobin, 1993) included autonomy, relevance, shared control, or critical voice scales which imply student empowerment, they place much less emphasis on the permission the student perceives he or she has to think about or express his or her ideas about science concepts, which implies empowerment at a more personal level. One would suppose that students would need to feel empowered at this personal level before they would even contemplate sharing control of learning at the curricular level. It was proposed, therefore, that SALGO's Personal Empowerment, Teacher Support for Autonomy in Thinking or Deep Approach to Learning might differentiate between class groups differing in whether or not a constructivist teaching approach was used, where a more radical scale might not.

Consequently an analysis of variance for the SALGO factors was done with the teaching approach as the unit of analysis (Table 4). The first workshop group had been taught according to a constructivist approach (the teacher explicitly helped students to consider their prior knowledge and relate new learning to it and involved them in discussion and personal writing about their understanding of the concepts and the usefulness of the practical activities) and the other five groups were taught by different teachers in a more traditional method (lecturing, practical activities, and assessment of a formal practical report). Nevertheless, teachers in all workshops were required to teach the same topics and complete the same practical activities.

TABLE 4 ANOVA RESULTS FOR TEACHING APPROACH GROUP DIFFERENCES IN STUDENT

PERCEPTIONS OF CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT

SALGO Scale MS MS df F Eta 2 Between Within

PERSONAL EMPOWERMENT 10.04 0.33 1, 111 30.65 0.22 p<0.001

TEACHER SUPPORT FOR AUTONOMY IN THINKING

3.98 0.29 1, 111 13.95 0.11 p<0.001

DEEP APPROACH TO 1.60 0.26 1, 111 6.07 0.05 LEARNING p<0.05

Using SPSS ANOVA, significant differences at the 0.05 level were found between the first workshop group (constructivist approach) and all the other workshop groups combined (non- constructivist approach) for all three scales, Personal Empowerment (PE; p < 0.001), Teacher Support for Autonomy in Thinking (TSAT; p < 0.001), and Deep Approach to Learning (DAL; p = 0.015). That there was not a larger difference for DAL is at first surprising since this factor would seem to be the most closely related to a constructivist approach, but when one considers that DAL consists of beliefs and behaviours that are likely to be deeply rooted and of long standing, it is note-worthy that there is a significant difference at all for the two teaching approach groups. Similar analyses of variance were also performed using the students' scores on each of the Revised CLES scales, including the attitude scale, and on the

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STEBI-B (self-efficacy) scales, without any significant differences being found between any of the groups. Thus the hypothesis that the SALGO scales would differentiate between these teaching approaches, where a more radical scale might not, was confirmed. (Further results, and copies of the Salgo questionnaire and proposed scales with item Ioadings, are available from the author on request.)

The differences found between the constructivist and the more traditional workshop groups gives some support to the validity of the SALGO scales as measures of a constructivist learning environment. The PE and TSAT scales may be especially useful for teachers who are attempting to assist their students to take back control of their own learning, and the Deep Learning Approach scale may be a useful aid to teachers wanting to gauge the epistemological beliefs and level of cognitive engagement of their students.

These results, however, should be treated with caution for two reasons. Firstly, since the measures were only used at the end of the semester, there is no guarantee that the randomly allocated groups (in as far as students in University courses can be randomly allocated) did not differ significantly before they experienced the different learning environments. Secondly, since the workshops differed in both teacher and students, it is impossible to know which out of many possible factors and interactions between factors influenced these results. Consequently a more in-depth study would be needed to investigate why the students responded as they did on the SALGO questionnaire, and what part a constructivist approach played in the overall result.

CONCLUSION

This study reported on an evaluation of a model which proposed interrelationships between the quality of student learning, students' motivational beliefs and the science learning environment as interpreted by students. A personalised constructivist learning environment scale, the Survey of Apparent Learning Goal Orientation, was constructed based on this model and would seem to be a useful instrument for measuring some factors which may be related to conceptual change. As such it could be a useful adjunct to other science learning environment scales.

Results obtained using the SALGO would seem to indicate that students' beliefs and actions may be affected by their interpretations of the teacher's actions. A relationship was reported between perceptions of the teacher as treating students and their thinking with respect, of the teacher as encouraging student discussion of scientific ideas, and of themselves as having a deep approach to learning. These dimensions also correlated with other critical constructivist learning environment factors, attitudes to learning science, and self-efficacy measures.

Moreover, the fact that such perceptions differed significantly between groups, suggests that these perceptions are not solely the result of relatively stable personality characteristics but may be influenced by the learning environment. There is some evidence that a learning environment which has an explicitly constructivist approach to teaching may be more likely to be perceived by the students as having a teacher who respects them, and who supports autonomy in thinking, as well as to be a place where they are more likely to take a deeper approach to learning.

From a methodological perspective, although the first three SALGO factors were reliable and appear to be conceptually valid in this context, the SALGO as a whole needs fuller development and further testing with a larger pool of items and a more substantial and diverse population if it is to be used as a survey instrument with more general applicability. It must be remembered that, because of time constraints, the initial item pool on this short trial version of

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the SALGO was only 20 items, with only three or four in each of the a priori categories. Consequently, with an increased number of items, it is possible that even stronger factors would be found, and that, with classes differing in the activities set, the factors disregarded in this study (such as the level of challenge of tasks) could still prove to be reliable factors.

In any case, regardless of the statistical tests of significance for factors, the meaning (or meanings) of the items to students, and their relationship to the subculture of the classroom as it continually evolves, needs to be investigated in more depth before more confident assertions about relationships in a particular context can be made (Taylor et al., 1994; Tobin & McRobbie, 1994, in a paper submitted to Science Education). A preferable method of using the SALGO would be to adapt it for the particular context a researcher is ir~terested in investigating, by choosing items that are theoretically similar but more relevant in that context.

Nevertheless, it seems that factors which influence students' motivational beliefs may be just as important to conceptual change as coldly rational factors relating strictly to content. How students perceive the teacher behaving towards them may influence the depth of their cognitive engagement and thus the quality of their learning. Teachers who want students to learn with more than superficial understanding may need to communicate to their students a mastery learning goal orientation and respect for their students' learning capabilities. It also seems prudent to add, however, that one should not expect big changes to happen quickly in such relatively stable characteristics as epistemological beliefs and learning approaches. Positive learning beliefs and actions probably need to be nourished by the learning environment over a considerable period of time, before they change substantially.

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AUTHOR

MARY HANRAHAN, PhD student, Centre for Mathematics and Science Education, Queensland University of Technology, Locked Bag 2, Red Hill, Queensland 4059. Specializations: secondary school science learning environments, writing in science, alternative frameworks, the language of science.