Monarcas y gobernadores

In phase two of the pre-pilot study, the aim was to collect open responses to the fourteen disposition statements that would then be validated and used to develop the questionnaires for the pilot study. This approach was similar to stage three of the procedure by Bennett and Hogarth (2005) involving students responding to the statements on a Likert–type scale and then explaining their view. The open responses in phase two formed the level 2 fixed responses in the questionnaires that would, eventually, be the options for selection by students in the pilot study as best suiting their reason for responding to the disposition statement with their level 1 response of either

agree, neither agree nor disagree or disagree. The fourteen statements used for the open response in phase two are shown in table 4.6.

Table 4.6: Fourteen disposition statements used in phase two of the pre-pilot stage Item

Number

Disposition Statement

1 I enjoy doing practical work in biology/chemistry/physics lessons

2 I am able to learn from practical work in biology/chemistry/physics lessons 3 I prefer practical work to non-practical work in biology/chemistry/physics

lessons

4 Doing practical work is my favourite part of biology/chemistry/physics lessons

5 Practical work helps me understand biology/chemistry/physics 6 I find practical work in biology/chemistry/physics easy

7 What I do in biology/chemistry/physics practical work will be useful when I leave school

8 What I learn from biology/chemistry/physics practical work is always useful for when I leave school

9 I find practical work a way of seeing how biologists/chemists/physicists work in the real world

10 I think we should do more practical work in biology/chemistry/physics lessons

11 For me to learn in biology/chemistry/physics lessons, I need to do practical work

12 I prefer the freedom I have during practical work in biology/chemistry/physics lessons

13 My school science environment makes doing practical work difficult in my biology/chemistry/physics lessons

14 I do not find practical work helps my learning in biology/chemistry/physics

As can be seen in table 4.6 the disposition statements included biology, chemistry and physics separately rather than using the generic term science. It was decided that in order for the responses given by the students to be specific, the disposition statements would be best formatted to keep the sciences separate from one another. Indeed, in phase one of the pre-pilot stage there had been a number of comments for example, referring to the use of chemicals in chemistry. Therefore, from this phase onwards the disposition statements were the same but specific to biology, chemistry and physics. This in effect replicated the fourteen disposition statements; fourteen for biology, the same fourteen but with regards to chemistry and fourteen in regards to physics. The

layout of the open response questionnaire was the same for biology, chemistry and physics with the exception of two format changes. Firstly the change of science subject for each questionnaire and secondly the colour of paper the questionnaires were printed. It was decided for this phase coloured paper would be used to keep the science separate and to observe the change this may have on the students when completing them: chemistry was printed on green paper, physics on purple and biology on pink. An example of disposition statement one as laid out in the biology questionnaire can be seen in table 4.7.

Table 4.7: Biology questionnaire used in the open response phase two of the pre-pilot stage

1. I enjoy doing practical work in Biology lessons Please tick one choice from below:

I agree

I neither agree nor disagree I disagree

Please explain your answer:

It was decided that 30 students would complete seven of the fourteen statements for biology, for chemistry and for physics. Therefore 15 students would respond to disposition statements one to seven and another 15 students would respond to disposition statements eight to fourteen; this was seen as a sufficient number or responses to obtain theoretical saturation for the any appearing categories (Aikenhead & Ryan, 1989; Bowen, 2008). It was decided that the students should be in Year 9 or Year 10 because this is towards the end of the important years when students are forming their attitudes and decisions primarily for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) (Barmby et al. 2008). Furthermore, where possible it was decided that the students would complete the appropriate questionnaire for the lesson which they

were studying at the time of data collection; thus a student in a biology lesson would complete the biology open response questionnaire.

The approach taken for choosing the school was opportunistic although it was decided that the school used for this pre-pilot phase would be a school that was a typical secondary school. At the time of data collection, permission was granted from one school, School L, a secondary modern school with specialist science college status within a selective rural county. School L allowed for the researcher to have access to ninety Year 9 students during one period where all Year 9 students were in science lessons: thirty students were in a biology lesson, thirty in a chemistry lesson and thirty in a physics lesson. A stratified random sample was used when distributing the open response phase questionnaires; this meant within the categories of biology, chemistry and physics there was a mix of randomly selecting any Year 9 student (Cohen et al. 2007). The open response phase questionnaires were distributed by the researcher and the students were informed of how important it was that they gave their own opinion in response to the statement and the role of the questionnaires as part of the main study, and the development of an attitude questionnaire into students’ attitudes to practical work. All students were informed that the information they gave was anonymous and thus they were not to indicate their name anywhere on the paper.

Once all open response questionnaires were completed, the researcher avoiding censoring the responses at this pre-pilot stage; instead the responses were grouped according to which responses were similar or different between biology, chemistry and physics in respect to each disposition statement. These responses given in this open phase would become the fixed responses to be used in the pilot study. From looking for common responses to each of the fourteen disposition statements, it became possible to

group between two and seven possible responses for each agree, neither agree nor disagree and disagree option for each disposition statement. An important point here is that the responses were kept as close as possible to students’ words in order to ensure that the final questionnaires were drawing on students’ words directly as seen the VOSTS approach (Lederman et al., 1998).

From analysis of the responses at the phase two, it appeared that there were a number of disposition statements that required further investigation because there were limited options for the ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ for some of the statements. Table 4.8 shows the disposition statements for each science subject that requires further probing of students to ask why there were limited responses. All disposition statements have been included to show which statements were completed by this phase of the pre-pilot study.

Table 4.8: Disposition statements and required sections that are lacking and thus need further investigation

Disposition Statements Biology: Chemistry: Physics:

1. I enjoy doing practical work in

biology/chemistry/physics lessons Complete Disagree Disagree 2. I am able to learn from practical work in

biology/chemistry/physics lessons Disagree lacking across all three 3. I prefer practical work to non-practical work

in biology/chemistry/physics lessons Disagree lacking across all three 4. Doing practical work is my favourite part of

biology/chemistry/physics lessons Disagree lacking across all three 5. Practical work helps me understand

biology/chemistry/physics Disagree lacking across all three 6. I find practical work in

biology/chemistry/physics easy Disagree Disagree

Agree and Disagree 7. What I do in biology/chemistry/physics

practical work will be useful when I leave school

Complete Complete Disagree 8. What I learn from biology/chemistry/physics

practical work is always useful for when I leave school

Complete Complete Complete 9. I find practical work a way of seeing how

biologists/chemists/physicists work in the real world

Disagree Disagree Complete 10. I think we should do more practical work in

biology/chemistry/physics lessons Disagree Disagree Complete 11. For me to learn in biology/chemistry

/physics lessons, I need to do practical work Disagree Complete Complete 12. I prefer the freedom I have during practical

work in biology/chemistry/physics lessons Disagree Disagree Complete 13. My school science environment makes

doing practical work difficult in my biology/chemistry/physics lessons

Complete Complete Complete 14. I do not find practical work helps my

learning in biology/chemistry/physics Complete Complete Agree

What table 4.8 shows is how students seemed to agree with the statements although, it is interesting to note how disposition statement 6 in physics, I find practical work in physics easy, lacked any agree responses unlike biology and chemistry. However, it was decided that the understanding of the disposition statement here was quite misleading, as it was unclear as to whether the students were accepting the disposition statement

because they felt that in terms of doing practical work it was easy in physics or that the understanding of practical work in physics was easy. This issue along, with a lack of disagree responses to the other disposition statements, was addressed in phase three of the pre-pilot stage. It was decided that the researcher needed to probe the students’ attitudes further into those disposition statements in order to validate that these options were not rejected for null reasons. In order to accommodate for this, phase three of the pre-pilot was required before completion of the pilot study questionnaires. This involved interviews with the same ninety students but in six groups of fifteen Year 9 students, this is now discussed.