This study examines if the indoor sandbox is a possible arena for early explorations and discoveries regarding physics amongst preschool toddlers. This thesis draws upon a phenomenological perspective, where Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the lifeworld and the phenomenology of perception are central to the study. A critical moments methodology is used in this study when observing preschool children playing in an indoor sandbox. Themes such as which toys are used and if there are physics phenomena present in the sandbox are investigated. Semi-structural interviews, done with the pedagogues from the wards where the observations where done, are used as a complement to the observations. The interviews focus on the pedagogues’ experiences of the potential of the sandbox as a place of learning and exploring in relation to physics. The study shows that there is a relation between the toys, the quality of the sand and physical aspects of the sandbox. One of the main results is that elements as toys and the quality of the sand have a positive effect upon the presence of physics phenomena in the sandbox.

Children have prior knowledge, or mini-theories about science topics presented at school before being formally taught that is constructed from their everyday experiences. Teachers generally do not take this knowledge into consideration in the planning of science units and are often confused about why their students fail to learn. Hewson (1983) suggests that students will experience conceptual change only if it is intelligible, plausible, and fruitful and that prior knowledge, which is often an alternate conception of a scientific idea, must be challenged or clarified. Schon (1984) claims that teachers need to reflect on their actions in order to understand their own as well as their students' "constructed worlds". He suggests that teachers, when they reflect, become their own researchers. This case study examines how I, a teacher/researcher, adopted a constructlvlst perspective towards teaching a unit in magnetism and how the students responded. Vignettes of selected Incidents tell the story of the difficulties that my students had learning some of the concepts of magnetism and how I reacted to the knowledge that they were having difficulty. The unit in magnetism was taught to my class of thirty-two students (10/11 year olds) at an elementary school in a community in British Columbia using a constructivlst teaching sequence developed by Driver (1986).The lessons in magnetism were video-taped and both the students and I kept a journal. To elicit students' ideas about magnetism a diagnostic test was given at the beginning of the unit. A continuing record of students' ideas was kept throughout the study and at the end a post diagnostic test was given to see which, if any, alternate conceptions persisted. It was found that teaching with a constructivist approach had its' difficulties. Reflecting, for myself and my students, took practice and taking students' ideas Into consideration, both in the planning and teaching stages, may have taken more time than many teachers have available. However, the knowledge that I gained about my students' beliefs, through the process of reflecting, was valuable in planning lessons that both challenged and clarified the students' alternate conceptions. Teachers are recommended to take their students' ideas into consideration in lesson planning and to use activities that will encourage conceptual change. However, teachers should consider the time factor and the difficulties in reflecting before using a constructivist approach in teaching science. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis is to identify typical patterns of career destinations for young women and men in relation to their high school science preparedness. This is an empirical structural study that documents the way high school academic capital is turned (or not) into human capital for science and engineering professions. The study uses ten years of longitudinal data on educational and career paths of British Columbia high school graduates of the Class of '88. Correspondence analysis and other descriptive statistics provide a picture of students' participation in mathematics and science senior high school courses and post-secondary academic programs. School course choices, post-secondary educational attainment, specialization fields are correlated to respondents' high school science preparedness, parental education and gender. A major finding of this study is that high school science preparedness opens greater opportunity for students to attend and succeed along abroad range of post-secondary pathways. Still, thesis findings confirm the existence of a "leaking" phenomenon along the physical sciences and engineering post-secondary pipeline, especially for women as well as men with non-university educated parents. Equity in access and outcomes is discussed in relation to respondents' possession of cultural and academic capital, and in relation to gender inequality that persists within school and post-secondary institutions, the science community and society at large. Implications for further research emerge from the literature review and the interpretation of thesis findings. Longitudinal research needs to explore more directly the reasons why many young women and men who excelled in science at the high school level depart from the science pipeline sooner or later. A major conclusion is that the "critical mass" approach that directs attention toward creating a large supply pool to feed the science pipeline by encouraging more young women to enter the field of science is still a unilateral numerical strategy, and more has to be done to improve the retention and advancement of talented women interested in science. This thesis reinforces the need for an analysis of the culture of the science community and a revision of the leaking science pipeline concept that should be replaced by a more open non-linear model of science careers. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to compare the results of applying conventional and Rasch item analysis approaches to a grade four science test item pool. A 76-item modified version of the pilot tests used to construct the British Columbia Grade k Science Assessment Test administered in Spring 1978 was utilized. This item pool was administered to 527 grade four students attending 15 schools located in three adjacent South Okanagan school districts. Eleven booklets were eliminated through application of criteria aimed at controlling for possible effects of speededness. Item analyses were obtained using the 516 remaining booklets. Preliminary investigations of the test data indicated that it would be best to limit item analyses to the 30-item Concepts and 32-item Processes subtests in the item pool. Coefficient alpha indices and factor analysis data were used to determine the unidimensionality of the subtests. Coefficient alpha indices indicated strong subtest homogeneity. For each of the subtests, however, more than one common factor was found on which there were salient loadings. Study of clusters of items with salient pattern coefficients, however, failed to yield unique definitions of possible different traits being measured by the subtests. It was decided that the subtests were essentially unidimensional and that application of the Rasch model was justified. The LERTAP computer program was used for conventional item analysis. Four criteria relating to item difficulty, corrected item-subtest point-biserial correlations, distractor-subtest point-biserial correlations, and distractor difficulty were applied. The BICAL computer program was used for the Rasch item analyses. Rasch criteria used related to item mean square fit, item discrimination, and item difficulty. For Rasch Approaches I and IV all criteria were used. In Rasch Approaches II and V, the item difficulty criterion was eliminated. Rasch Approaches Mi and VI used only the mean square fit criterion. For Rasch Approaches I, II, and III, Panchapakesan's correction for guessing formula was used to determine subject membership in the calibration sample. The random guessing level-formula was applied in Rasch Approaches IV, V, and VI. Eight comparisons were made on the subtests resulting from the application of the Conventional Approach and the six Rasch approaches. Four of the comparisons were aimed at the item level. These included the percentage of items rejected by each approach, the efficiency of the Rasch approaches in eliminating items illustrating problems related to conventional criteria, the percentage overlap of rejected items among pairs of different approaches, and the percentage of items rejected solely on the basis of Rasch criteria in the Rasch approaches. Four comparisons focussed on the subtests as entities. The first involved comparisons of numbers of items in each subtest, subtest means, standard deviations, and score ranges, as well as Hoyt estimates of internal consistency and subtest standard errors of measurement. A second comparison involved correlations of subjects' scores among all Concepts subtests and among all Processes subtests. In a third comparison, correlated t-tests were performed among all possible pairs of Concepts subtests and among all possible pairs of Processes subtests. The final comparison involved the fit of items in the subtests to the Concepts and Processes items used in the final version of the British Columbia Grade k Science Test. The one conventional and six Rasch approaches produced quite different Concepts and Processes subtests as regards specific items selected by each. Numbers of items in the subtests and consequently subtest characteristics, however, were more related to the stringency of the criteria applied rather than the approach--conventional or Rasch--used to build the subtests. The number of items in each subtest affected the reliability of the instrument. Use of the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula to adjust the Hoyt internal consistency estimates for the subtests yielded nearly equivalent reliabilities. The content sampling of the subtests was also a function of the stringency of the item analysis criteria used in their construction. Shorter subtests provided a poorer sampling of the content domain than did the longer subtests constructed using more lenient approaches. While there appears to be a similarity between the conventional £-value and the Rasch item difficulty index, application of Rasch criteria identified items with conventional item-subtest point-biserial problems less effectively. Rasch item analysis proved to be particularly inefficient in identifying items with conventional distractor problems. Although Rasch approaches produced subtests of equal reliability compared to those built using the conventional approach, and Rasch subtests ordered subjects in essentially the same fashion as subtests built using conventional methods, it was concluded that the conventional approach to itern analysis should remain the method of choice. The conventional approach provides information not only to identify poor items but also to improve them. Rasch approaches provide information related to item quality, but do not provide insights for improvement of poor items. Rasch approaches to item analysis should therefore only be applied to large item pools where rejection of items would not seriously affect the resulting instruments' effectiveness in sampling the content domain. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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A collaborative science curriculum created by a first and third grade class. The students were provided with the global theme of change and were invited to brainstorm topics of interests that were utilized to create a science theme cycle.

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