Resumen de Ecocultural Factors in Students’ Ability To Relate Science Concepts Learned at School and Experienced at Home: Implications for Chemistry Education
Kunle Oke Oloruntegbe, Adakole Ikpe
Making connections between science concepts taught in school and real-world phenomena is considered important in engaging students in learning. The present study examines students’ abilities to relate their in-school science learning to everyday experiences at home. The sample comprised 200 senior secondary chemistry students drawn from Ondo State, Nigeria. The students were asked to respond to a validated structured questionnaire that explored the ability of students to relate chemistry concepts they had learned in school to those activities they carried out daily at home. Demographic factors such as the effect of parents’ socioeconomic background on students’ ability to relate the two experiences were also explored. The results reveal that the majority of the students could not establish a clear relationship between science concepts learned at school and science concepts embedded in their everyday experiences, despite daily exposure in both contexts. The findings also indicate that students’ socioeconomic status exerted little influence on their ability to connect science to real-life experience. The questionnaire survey also showed that students felt many chemistry teachers do not make explicit connections with these home-learning experiences in teaching science concepts. The study is potentially useful for science teachers, authors of textbooks, teachers’ trainers, and curriculum planners in improving the learning environment of chemistry students.
