Perceptions of Elementary Education College Students Re-garding Their Public School Elementary Science Activities

Donald A. VannanProfessor of Education^ State College, BIoomsbur^f Pennsylvania 17815

The results of a recently conducted survey of elementary educationmajors at Bloomsburg State College, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania,showed that the students had strong likes and dislikes concerningactivities involving elementary science which they experienced whenpupils in elementary schools.The survey, conducted by Dr. Donald A. Vannan, Professor of

Education at the college and instructor of the elementary sciencemethods course, involved 117 junior and senior students taking thecourse in elementary science methodology. The students were fromPennsylvania counties and the entire group had a mean age of 20years. The male-female breakdown included 30 males and 87 females.Due to the age of the group and the lack of elementary science in-

struction in public schools approximately fifteen years ago, it wasnext determined how many of the 117 actually had science taught ona regular basis while they were pupils in the schools. A total of 77(66% of 117) had had science instruction and 40 (34% of 117) re-plied that they had had "no science instruction." The group to whichthe following questions were posed numbered 77: (1) What were someof the most enjoyable activities on any grade level (kindergartenthrough grade 6) while you were in an elementary school? and (2)What were some of the most undesirable (disliked) activities on anygrade level?The results listed below will involve the highest three categories

and also the percentage of 77 students listing these replies to ques-tion (1) dealing with enjoyable activities: 16 students (20%) listed"growing plants from seeds," 12 students (15%) listed "experimentsthe pupils did themselves," and 11 students (14%) combined plantswith another category and listed "animals and plants." It is quiteevident even in this limited research, that growing of plants made alasting impression on a fairly large number of students.A total of 8 students indicated that they "couldn^t remember any

activities," 5 listed "discovering magnetism," and 3 suggested"studying the solar system." The following replies were listed by 2students each: "just doing experiments," "field trips and experi-ments," "whole class science fair projects," "projects involvingweather," "how a light bulb works," and "the world globe andseasonal change." All other indications were by one student each andwill not be listed here.

801

802 School Science and Mathematics

On the negative side, the undesirable activities, some distinct pat-terns also arose in the tabulations. The results which follow will in-volve the highest four categories and also the respective percentagesof the 77 students which responded to question (2) dealing with un-enjoyable activities: 13 students (16%) listed "course taught by onlyreading the textbook," 12 students replied that "there were too fewexperiments," the same number of students, 12, indicated that theydisliked "just answering the end-of-unit questions;" both of thesegroups separately accounted for 15% of the students. A total of 11students (14%) listed their main complaint as being "forced tomemorize too many things."A total of 8 students indicated that they "couldn^t remember any

activities," 2 complained of "lack of field trips," 2 disliked "talkingabout planets and atmosphere," 2 were against the amount of prob-lems to be "solved," and 2 voted against a combination activity of"reading and then testing." Some individual complaints involved"excessive neatness required in our notebooks," "hard grading on ourspelling of terms," "the language of electricity," "copying experi-ments in notebooks," "boring�children not involved," "preparingdry scientific reports," "memorizing scientists and what they con-tributed," and "limitations in scope and time for science."

In summary, it appears from this limited study that some ac-tivities, either enjoyable or unenjoyable, leave lasting impressions inthe minds of prospective teachers. Also, the enjoyable activities ingeneral involved growing plants, pupil directed experiments, andstudies involving animals. Conversely, the activities involving onlyreading about science, lack of experiments and demonstrations, andanswering end-of-unit questions were downgraded by the respon-dents. Although applying to any elementary education subject, "be-ing forced to memorize" was also one of the techniques eliciting un-favorable responses from the students.These responses, although taken from a study of limited size,

should give the elementary teacher some "food for thought" in pur-suing activities in the area of elementary science.

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICSFIFTIETH ANNUAL MEETING

APRIL 16-19, 1972CONRAD HILTON HOTEL�CHICAGO, ILLINOIS