Department of Cell Biology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America.
Department of Physics, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Feb 13;15(2):e0229237. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229237. eCollection 2020.
The goal of our ongoing research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of high school level science fair and improvements that can help science educators make science fair a more effective, inclusive and equitable learning experience. In this paper, we confirm and extend our previous findings in several important ways. We added new questions to our anonymous and voluntary surveys to learn the extent to which students had an interest in science or engineering careers and if science fair participation increased their interest in science or engineering. And we surveyed a national rather than regional high school student group by incorporating our survey into the Scienteer online portal now used by Texas and some other states for science fair registration, parental consent, and project management. We learned that about ~60% of the more than 300 students in the national cohorts completing surveys in 2017 and 2018 said that they were interested in a career in science or engineering, and ~60% said that participating in science fair increased their interest in science or engineering. About two-thirds of the students were required to participate in science fair, and that requirement reduced the frequency of students who said that science fair increased their interest. In the worst case, ~10% of the students who said that they were not interested in a career in science or engineering and who were required to participate in science fair engaged in research misconduct (i.e., plagiarism and making up their results). Students' positive comments about competition in science fair focused on the competition incentive, whereas their positive comments about science fair that was non-competitive focused on learning about the scientific process and learning in general. We discuss the findings in the context of National Science Teaching Association guidance about voluntary science fair participation and begin to identify features of science fair practice consistent with increased student interest in the sciences or engineering.
我们正在进行的研究的目标是确定高中科学展览的优势和劣势，并提出改进措施，帮助科学教育工作者使科学展览成为更有效、更具包容性和公平性的学习体验。在本文中，我们以几种重要的方式证实和扩展了我们之前的发现。我们在匿名和自愿调查中添加了新问题，以了解学生对科学或工程职业的兴趣程度，以及科学展览参与是否增加了他们对科学或工程的兴趣。我们通过将调查纳入现在德克萨斯州和其他一些州用于科学展览注册、家长同意和项目管理的 Scienteer 在线门户，调查了全国范围内而不是区域性的高中生群体。我们了解到，在 2017 年和 2018 年完成调查的 300 多名全国性学生群体中，约有 60%的学生表示对科学或工程职业感兴趣，约 60%的学生表示参加科学展览增加了他们对科学或工程的兴趣。大约三分之二的学生被要求参加科学展览，而这一要求降低了表示科学展览增加了他们兴趣的学生的频率。在最坏的情况下，约 10%的表示对科学或工程职业不感兴趣且被要求参加科学展览的学生从事研究不端行为（即抄袭和捏造结果）。学生对科学展览竞争的积极评价集中在竞争激励上，而他们对非竞争性科学展览的积极评价则集中在了解科学过程和一般学习上。我们在全国科学教学协会关于自愿参加科学展览的指导意见的背景下讨论了这些发现，并开始确定与学生对科学或工程的兴趣增加相一致的科学展览实践的特征。
