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

The target participants were Form 6 physics students from an aided boys’ school with English as the medium of instruction. It enabled the researcher to explore how the boys experienced different situational interests in physics under mostly the same school-based context, curriculum and instruction. The school’s public examination performance varied across years with an average of about 30% to 50% graduates getting an offer for local university funded degree program, which was higher than the territory-wide average. It implied there were generally more high academic achievers.

The researcher was the participants’ physics teacher during September 2011 to July 2013, and left the school afterwards. The researcher was quite familiar with their physics-related learning experiences as he taught the target participants when they were in Form 4 and 5. The researcher distributed the instruments (Appendix 1) to the participants and conducted a short briefing to explain the academic purpose of the research. The good teacher-students rapport assured the quality of students’ responses.

The instrument is an A4 size paper that requests participants to write one to three interesting learning experiences in physics as shown in Appendix 1. A blank box of the size of two-thirds of the page is included to ensure participants high flexibility to illustrate their interesting learning experiences in various ways, such as writing, drawing figures, showing equations, etc. The instruments were distributed in January 2014. The participants had completed the whole NSS physics curriculum at that time, so they could make informed choices among all the subject contents or activities. They chose one to three perceptually interesting physics-related learning experiences that represented some triggered situational interests from external stimuli sparkled (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). The popularity of situational interests generated from topics or activities within the whole physics curriculum can be figured out.

A qualitative method of interview was used for an in-depth understanding of students’ situational interest by selecting five students with varied interest and academic performance in physics. The researcher identified the students with high, medium and low interest in physics according to observations on their behavior and engagement in activities. Students with a higher interest used to be self-motivated and engaged in the related activities, while the one with a lower interest would be less likely to show those behaviors (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). The researcher also referred to the students’ internal assessment results so as to select students with varied academic performance.

The researcher compared interviewees’ feeling and value related valences on interest development in order to generate an all-rounded understanding on how their experiences affect their interest. A general interview protocol is shown in table 1. The order of questions may not be strictly followed for smooth conversation purpose during the interview.

Table 1. Interview protocol

How do you rank your interest level in physics? Score “10” represents highly interested while “0” represents absolutely no interest.
According to your mentioned learning experience(s) on the paper,

Can you provide more details on what is that learning experience?
What are the elements of an interesting learning experience?
Why do you find it interesting?

What are the reasons for you to choose chose physics as your elective in senior form?
*You had experienced two investigative studies, one in form 4 and another in form 5.

Do you find them interesting? Why?
Do you enjoy the collaborative work?
Do you have any undesirable experiences in the investigation? What are they? Why?

According to your ranked interest level, you are interested / not interested in physics.

Can you describe some undesirable experience in physics? Why do you find it undesirable?
How could you encounter such undesirable experience so that you retain highly interested in physics? / you continue to sit for HKDSE examination?

* will be asked only if interviewees did not mention in the instrument

The interview began with asking interviewees to rank their self-interest level in physics so as to triangulate the researcher’s and students’ perception. Then interviewees would be asked to elaborate on their learning experience mentioned in the instrument to facilitate the conversation. Follow-up and confirmation questions were made whenever the researcher deemed necessary for an in-depth understanding on why students found the learning experience interesting.

A selected learning activity of IS would be asked for those who did not mention IS in the instrument. An in-depth understanding on how students perceived on IS possibly yields insights on its worth and merit in NSS physics. The researcher asked for their undesirable experiences afterwards to triangulate their responses to interesting learning experiences as well as explore how students encounter negative experiences or lost interest.