Factors associated with students’ engagement and participation in year 11 and year 12 science classrooms

This study investigated factors associated with students’ participatory style in Years 11/12 science classrooms. Students’ preferences for verbal or non-verbal engagement and participation practices and what makes some students more verbal while others remain more silent was examined. To measure factors of interest, we developed the Engagement and Participation in Classroom-Science (EPIC-S) questionnaire, consisting of inquiry into four clusters: Expectations, Attitudes, Interaction, and Practices, and which was validated using Rasch Analysis (RA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). A total of 557 students in Australia, Indonesia, South Korea and Taiwan participated. Findings indicated verbal and non-verbal practices were strongly correlated (r=0.6). Factors associated with verbal and non-verbal practices were expectations for classroom engagement and participation practices, peer support, and interest in science. Teacher openness was found to be associated only with students’ non-verbal practices and gender was a significant variable for non-verbal practices. While student country was not found to be associated with engagement and participation practices, upon calculating the standard error of the mean (SE) to predict trends among populations in each country using sample mean values, there were differences in verbal and non-verbal engagement and participation practices.
Keywords: Participation and engagement, verbal and non-verbal practices, secondary science classroom