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A Model-Based Inquiry Sequence as a Heuristic to Evaluate Students’ Emotional, Behavioural, and Cognitive Engagement

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Abstract

In this study we address the need to promote student engagement with school science and the need to measure a more comprehensive conception of engagement considering three dimensions of engagement: emotional, behavioural, and cognitive. We address the first issue by designing and implementing a model-based inquiry instructional sequence focused on fostering students’ engagement with science. The second issue is addressed by developing and testing a heuristic that measures student engagement holistically by focusing on all three dimensions mentioned. The results report that our short MBI instructional sequence develop students’ emotional engagement because most of them recognize to having felt interest, concentration, and satisfaction and few students reported boredom, shame, or rejection during the teaching. They spent most of the time working in small groups and sharing-discussing their hypothesis, planning and evaluating their experimental designs, and building models to explain acid-base phenomena together which highlight behavioural and cognitive dimension of students’ engagement in our instructional sequence about chewing gum and pH of the mouth. The heuristic is designed to gather data continuously during instruction with minimal disruption to the learning and teaching sequence. The heuristic can be used by teachers, researchers, and also by students, to gain multi-level understandings about engagement by focusing on individual, group-level, or class-level analysis of responses.

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Notes

  1. The tasks, the phases of inquiry (boxes), and their objectives (ovals) are numbered in the cycle. Along the text, we only use these three numbers in order for the readers to identify the exact moment of the cycles with which we are referring to.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the students and teachers of the IES Murgi (El Ejido, Almeria) as well as to the teachers Lucia, Isabel, and Carmen and, also, Esteban and Yolanda from our Master Degree for their participation.

Funding

This paper is partially funded by MINECO (with FEDER funds, EDU2017-82197-P), CEIMAR-UAL, and Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (PRX19/00364) of the Spain Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sensociencia Team, CEIMAR-University of Almeria, Almeria, Spain

    M. Rut Jimenez-Liso, Maria Martinez-Chico & Rafael Lopez-Gay

  2. School of Teacher Education and Leadership | Faculty of Creative Industries, Education, and Social Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Alberto Bellocchi

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  1. M. Rut Jimenez-Liso
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  2. Alberto Bellocchi
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  4. Rafael Lopez-Gay
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Contributions

M Rut Jimenez-Liso and Maria Martinez-Chico designed and implemented the instructional sequence in the IES Murgi (Secondary School in El Ejido, Almeria. Spain). Rut, Maria, and Rafael Lopez-Gay collected and analysed the data (self-report questionnaire, video recordings, students’ drawings, etc.). Alberto Bellocchi contributed to the analyses, results, conceptual framework, ensuring that evidence-based claims were made, making revisions to logical sequencing of ideas, editing manuscript drafts, and providing conceptual input to the research.

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Correspondence to M. Rut Jimenez-Liso.

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There are no conflicts of interest, and ethical precautions were taken with the students and their parents’ consents for participation and publication.

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Jimenez-Liso, M.R., Bellocchi, A., Martinez-Chico, M. et al. A Model-Based Inquiry Sequence as a Heuristic to Evaluate Students’ Emotional, Behavioural, and Cognitive Engagement. Res Sci Educ 52, 1313–1334 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-021-10010-0

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