Developing Students’ Curiosity Through Chemistry Hands-on Activities: A Case of Selected Community Secondary Schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Esther Samwel Kibga 1 * , Emmanuel Gakuba 2, John Sentongo 3
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1 University of Rwanda-College of Education (African Center of Excellence for Innovative teaching of Mathematics and Science, RWANDA2 University of Rwanda-College of Education (UR-CE), P.O Box 55 Rwamagana, RWANDA3 Makerere University, Department of Science, Technical and Vocational Education (DSTVE), P.O. Box 7062 Kampala, UGANDA* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Curiosity is the inner drive for learning or ‘hunger for learning’ which is among the twenty-first-century learning competencies. Students in their earliest stage ought to exhibit curiosity to stir-up knowledge acquisition and exploration, yet the development of curiosity in the context of education is considered to be unusual. This research assesses how chemistry students develop and express curiosity in a hands-on learning environment. A sample of 169 senior three students from three community secondary schools in Dar es Salaam was involved in this study. Besides, the study examined how hands-on activities in chemistry lessons can be incorporated as a pedagogical practice to foster students’ curiosity. The study employed a convergent mixed method design in (QUAL+quant) form following a pragmatic stance. We used lesson observations, interviews, and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) to gather qualitative data while quantitative data were obtained through the Students’ Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SSRQ) and Teacher Rating Scale (TRS). It was revealed that hands-on activities can successfully be used when teachers share success criteria and learning intentions of a particular lesson. The overall results showed a significant increase in students’ curiosity due to the implementation of hands-on activities as an instructional strategy. In this perspective, we advocate for hands-on activities to be used frequently in chemistry lesson sessions and more studies should be done further on students’ curiosity in the field of education.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, 2021, Volume 17, Issue 5, Article No: em1962

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/10856

Publication date: 27 Apr 2021

Article Views: 2630

Article Downloads: 3233

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