انگیزش ها و اعتقادات در مورد ماهیت دانش علمی در یک محیط اکوسیستم مجازی همه جانبه

We explored Grade 6 students’ (n = 202) self-efficacy, epistemic beliefs, and science interest over a 10-day virtual ecology curriculum. Pre- and post-surveys were administered, and analyses revealed that (1) students became more self-efficacious about inquiring scientifically after participating in the activity; (2) students on average evinced a shift toward more constructivist views about the role of authority in justifying scientific claims; (3) students who identified more strongly with being a science person evinced greater gains in self-efficacy, developed a less constructivist view about the role of authority in justifying claims, and became more interested in science overall; and (4) students who held an incremental theory of ability evinced greater gains in self-efficacy. We discuss the implications of these findings for science educators and instructional designers in the design and use of immersive virtual worlds for middle school science students.

Much research has shown that science is often considered more confusing and more difficult than other academic subjects (Britner, 2007, Cleaves, 2005, Dweck, 2007 and National Academy of Sciences, 2011). Furthermore, in the context of the current educational climate in which such a high premium is put on students’ performance on standardized tests, teachers have little time to allow their students to explore science concepts in interesting ways, thereby contributing to students’ perception of science as dull. This struggle to motivate students presents a significant challenge especially during the middle school and high school years, when there is a marked general decline in motivation (Eccles et al., 1983). In addition to motivating students to do well in science, another major goal of science reform is to advance students’ beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge and knowing (National Academy of Sciences, 2011, National Research Council, 2000 and National Research Council, 2007). The more recent work on these beliefs, called epistemic beliefs, has examined relations between the construct and other facets of cognition like motivation and self-regulation ( Buehl and Alexander, 2005, Muis, 2004 and Tsai et al., 2011). Less attention, however, has been directed toward how epistemic beliefs change over short periods of time, especially with instructional interventions designed to tap students’ epistemic beliefs. Finally, innovative technologies have been receiving a considerable amount of attention as a way to motivate students, and to provide students with science inquiry experiences that both make learning interesting and provide life-like simulations of what real scientists do. However, despite the widely accepted notion that technology-based activities are inherently motivating, the evidence regarding their motivational effectiveness is mixed (Moos & Marroquin, 2010). For example, as Moos and Marroquin noted, some research has shown that computer-based instruction increased students’ interest in the material. But other research has shown that there are a number of variables, such as prior knowledge, that modify the relationship between participation in technology-based activities and students’ motivation. Another reason for these mixed findings could be the way that many researchers exploring educational technologies have conceptualized motivation—as a broad unidimensional construct. However, motivation is multifaceted in that some students may find an activity to be very interesting and enjoyable (i.e., high interest value beliefs) but not consider themselves competent enough to do well (i.e., lack self-efficacy). In fact, even in a recent meta-analysis, Wouters et al. (2013) adopted a broad view of motivation, yet reported findings on the overall construct of motivation without discussing which aspects of motivation seemed to be affected by participation in technology and which aspects did not. Thus, research regarding the motivational affordances of technology should be based firmly in well-studied theories of motivation that treat motivation as a multidimensional construct ( Chen et al., 2013 and Moos and Marroquin, 2010). Given the above, three main objectives guided the present study. First, because some have begun to question the truism that technology is inherently motivating, we explored the effect of participating in an inquiry-oriented virtual environment on students’ interest in science and their confidence in being able to conduct scientific inquiry to solve a complex problem (i.e., students’ self-efficacy for scientific inquiry). Second, because the virtual environment was also designed to tap students’ beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge—their epistemic beliefs—we explored the effect of participating in the virtual environment on students’ epistemic beliefs. Third, because numerous variables modify the relationship between participation in technology-rich activities and motivational outcomes, we sought to examine psychological moderators of this relationship. In particular, some researchers have shown that certain core assumptions can foster a framework for how students engage with their environment. The first core assumption we investigated was students’ theory of ability as either static (fixed theory of ability) or as malleable with effort (incremental theory of ability; Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995). The second core assumption we studied was students’ science identity—beliefs about the extent to which individuals identify with scientists and their work ( Estrada, Woodcock, Hernandez, & Schultz, 2011; Hernandez et al., in press and Pugh et al., 2009). In the present investigation we explored whether students’ theory of ability and their science identity modified the effect of the intervention on students’ self-efficacy, interest, and epistemic beliefs in science.

Students may benefit motivationally from innovative technologies that provide both an interactive, life-like, context in which to solve complex scientific problems, and appropriate tools to scaffold students’ progression through the learning goals. Such innovative technologies also have the ability to effect changes in students’ epistemic beliefs. These technologies, however, are not silver bullets—they require the involvement of designers and educators who can implement specific features that target specific educational outcomes. In addition, designers and educators should be aware that, by supporting one type of belief (e.g., self-efficacy), they must also take care not to detract from other beliefs (e.g., communicate the idea that science is nothing more than a canon of truths handed down by an elite few). Instructional designers and science educators who wish to design innovative technologies that develop students’ knowledge, skills, and beliefs in science would do well to provide appropriate scaffolds that facilitate students’ mastery of increasingly more complicated tasks; allow students opportunities to identify with the work of scientists; and, at the same time, challenge students to reconcile multiple perspectives derived from various sources of information.