Encouraging a "Romantic Understanding" of Science: The Effect of the Nikola Tesla Story

Autor/inn/en	Hadzigeorgiou, Yannis; Klassen, Stephen; Klassen, Cathrine Froese
Titel	Encouraging a "Romantic Understanding" of Science: The Effect of the Nikola Tesla Story
Quelle	In: Science & Education, 21 (2012) 8, S.1111-1138 (28 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0926-7220
DOI	10.1007/s11191-011-9417-5
Schlagwörter	Evidence; Conferences (Gatherings); Experimental Groups; Control Groups; Student Attitudes; Grade 9; Science Education; Teaching Methods; Concept Formation; Intervention; Story Telling + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Evidenz; Schülerverhalten; School year 09; 9. Schuljahr; Schuljahr 09; Naturwissenschaftliche Bildung; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode; Concept learning; Begriffsbildung
Abstract	The purpose of this paper is to discuss and apply the notion of romantic understanding by outlining its features and its potential role in science education, to identify its features in the story of Nikola Tesla, and to describe an empirical study conducted to determine the effect of telling such a story to Grade 9 students. Elaborated features of the story are the humanization of meaning, an association with heroes and heroic qualities, the limits of reality and extremes of experience, a sense of wonder, and a contesting of conventions and conventional ideas. The study demonstrates the learning benefits of encouraging a romantic understanding through a story that is structured explicitly around the identified features, in this instance in the context of the production and transmission of alternating current electricity. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of journal entries showed that the group of students who were encouraged to understand the concept of alternating current romantically (the experimental group) became more involved with both the content and the context of the story than a comparison group of students who were taught the concept explicitly, without a context (the control group). The students in the experimental group also performed statistically better on a science-content test taken 1 week and again 8 weeks after the indicated teaching intervention. This finding, along with the content analyses of students' journals, provided evidence of romantic understanding of the science content for those students who listened to the Tesla story. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10