A school-based study on situational interest of investigative study in senior physics

Physics is one of the elective subjects under the new senior secondary (NSS) curriculum. It includes content-based topics and IS. IS aims on providing “students with an opportunity to design and conduct an investigation with a view to solving an authentic problem”, and “a portion of the curriculum time is set aside for this purpose. Students are expected to make use of their knowledge and understanding of physics, together with generic skills in a group-based investigative study” (CDC & HKEAA, 2007, p.86). IS can therefore be perceived as a part of the curriculum with a purpose of providing students with experiences in solving authentic problems in order to raise their interest and sustain their motivation.

In 2013, a curriculum review on physics was conducted, in which some contents were trimmed (CDC & HKEAA, 2015). IS remains to be an optional component for schools in response to most physics teachers’ concerns, who request higher flexibility when delivering the content while less emphasis on developing scientific process skills and interest through investigation. Does it mean IS’s role in raising students’ interest is less important? How effective is it in sustaining students’ motivation to study physics? Is it worth to retain IS in the curriculum and conduct it within the suggested teaching hours? The author, who is a former physics teacher with experience in teaching NSS physics, conducted this research to study the effect of IS in triggering students’ interest.

Recent development of investigation in physics education in Hong Kong

School-based assessment (SBA) has been adopted in the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination physics since 2004 to assess students’ practical skills, constituting 15% of the subject mark. For NSS physics, SBA, which includes practical experiments and IS if the school implements it, constitutes 20% of the subject mark. The change in curriculum and assessment reflected an increased emphasis on practical skills and investigations. However, Yeung et al (2012) found that physics teachers place greater emphasis on the examination written paper than that on SBA as the effect of the latter on students’ final grades was negligible. Also, as teachers relied on cookbook-style experimental workbooks instead of developing inquiry or investigative teaching materials, there was no significant change in pedagogy (Yeung et al, 2012).

Although Hong Kong’s education system is often seen as examination-oriented, Yung et al (2013) found that both teachers and students gave high priority to conceptions that good science teaching should focus on science learning, including ways to think with scientific methods and stimulate students’ interest in learning. Besides, Tho et al　(2015) found that in an one-day experiential learning programme of physics in a theme park, students were motivated and found it interesting, enjoyable and easy to learn. The programme used low-cost technology that provided students with possibility of science learning in real-life contexts. This successful experience provided an insight that doing authentic tasks in IS using technology in school could have a similar effect to stimulate students’ interest.

Defining interest in physics

Krapp, Hidi & Renninger (1992) discussed interest as a phenomenon that emerges from an individual’s interaction with his or her environment, including an object, stimulus or their interdependence. Someone who is interested in physics simply means he or she has specific curiosity in physics. The individual is motivated intrinsically to interact with physics knowledge, lecturing, extensive readings, assessments, group work, practical work, and other related environments in order to acquire new information with positive feeling, valuing and endurance. Two views of interest, individual and situational interest, are usually identified for researching about interest. According to Krapp, Hidi & Renninger (1992), individual interests are stable and specific to individuals while situational interests are generated by certain stimulus characteristics and tend to be shared among different persons.

Individual interest
Individual interests are usually associated with increased knowledge, positive emotions, and increased reference value to individuals (Krapp, Hidi & Renninger, 1992). A person’s interest has integrated the interesting objects’ values into his or her personal significance. The individual interests are some dispositions that are enduring characteristics or general orientations to actions.

Persons who possess individual interest in physics are resilient to difficult questions and able to attenuate frustration. They would generate and seek answers to curiosity questions, stored knowledge as well as self-maintained positive feelings without external support (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). By recognizing the characteristics or actions, the level of a person’s individual interest could be determined.

Situational interest
Situational interest is generated by certain external stimuli from environment (Krapp, Hidi & Renninger, 1992). It often has a short-term effect and shared among individuals. For example, in a physics investigation activity, the learning environment is interesting to students. When they are experiencing the activity, they attain a psychological state of situational interest with positive emotions and engagement.

When a physics teacher adopts a teaching strategy such that a lot of students find it interesting, the strategy is regarded as the environment which sparkle students and trigger their positive feeling (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). Students with such an experiential state of situational interest result in a certain level of curiosity and exploratory behavior, but require external support to maintain.

Interest development – from situational to individual interest
Individual interest is stable and has positive effects in learning. It is, however, personally specific and makes it more difficult for teachers to trigger. Situational interest, on the other hand, is more readily affected by interventions. Teachers can adopt certain pedagogy or arrange certain learning environment for triggering students’ situational interests, followed by strategies to facilitate the transition into individual interest. Various models about the transitions have been suggested by some previous studies.

In self-determination theory, children becoming self-determined means they are engaged intrinsically in an activity with a full sense of wanting, choosing and personal endorsement (Deci & Ryan, 1991). On the contrary, extrinsically motivated behaviors are those for achieving the outcome administered by others but not for spontaneous satisfaction of the activity (Deci, 1992). Extrinsic motivation can be transformed into internal regulation through an internalization process (Deci & Ryan, 1991). When a person internalizes the value of an activity, he or she transforms the external factors into intrinsic motivation. For a person to feel self-determined, he or she must be motivated by a combination of the psychological needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy (Deci, & Ryan, 1991). Krapp (2002) proposed an ontogenetic approach of interest development based on self-determination theory. The approach expresses an extended duration of situational interest in a person which facilitates the “internalization” on value and feeling on self. Thereafter the situational interest transited into a person’s individual interest.

Hidi and Renninger (2006) suggested a four-phase model of interest development: triggered situational interest, maintained situational interest, emerging individual interest and well-developed individual interest. The model generally describes how both affective and cognitive factors contribute in interest development. Affective component of interest refers to positive emotions accompanying engagement, and cognitive component means perceptual or representational activities to engagement (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). The roles of affects and cognitions vary among different phases.

Both ontogenetic transition and four-phase model of interest development mentioned the important roles of feeling and value components. The feeling-related valences are the positive feelings of enjoyment and involvement that precede, accompany, or follow activity associated the topic or object of interest, while value-related valances refer to personal significance ascribing to a topic (Schiefele et al, 1992). Situational interest required an extended period of time to facilitate individual interest development.