Browsing by Subject "syväoppiminen"

It has been observed that children’s interest towards natural sciences decreases as they grow up and start middle school. The decrease of interest towards natural sciences and studying them has led to a situation, where science and technology students’ relative share of higher education students has been falling in some of the OECD countries. Formal education needs support to carry out fascinating science education for children and to maintain their interest towards natural sciences. One of the opportunities to fascinate children towards sciences are science centers and their activities either combined with formal education or organized in an informal form like science camps. The aim of this research is to survey the biological knowledge, the interest towards biology and the ability to apply the biological knowledge of science campers (mainly 5th and 6th graders) and to study the connections between them. At the same time, the effect of age and gender of the science campers is studied. To survey the biological knowledge of the campers, multiple-choice test was used and the fascination with biology was investigated with Likert scale variables. The ability to apply the biological knowledge was investigated with drawings that were produced during a biology-themed science camp program. The data was analyzed using quantitative methods. The results indicated that the science campers were relatively fascinated with biology and that they master biological knowledge quite well but the ability to apply the knowledge was varying. There were no differences between different ages nor genders but there are many factors such as the economic status of campers’ families that might have affected on the results. There was found a statistically significant connection between biological knowledge and fascination with biology, which is not surprising, but it speaks in favor of the importance of supporting fascination in terms of learning.