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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

College Students' Perceptions of Interpersonal Relationships
Related to the Development of Their Interest in Science

presented by

Li-hsuan Yang

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D . degree in Educational. Psycho logy

:7767/ 4K d‘ﬁéi4

Major professor

 

 

MS U is an Afﬁrmatiw Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12T71

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
To AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECAILED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11/00 chlRC/DmDID.wS'-p.14

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COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
RELATED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR INTEREST IN SCIENCE

By

Li-hsuan Yang

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology
and Special Education

1999

 

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ABSTRACT

COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
RELATED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR INTEREST IN SCIENCE

By

Li-hsuan Yang

This study investigated the origin and development of student interest in science
with the focus on students’ perceptions of interpersonal relationships related to their
development of interest in science. The following research questions were examined:
(1) What do college students mean when they say they are interested in science or
uninterested in science? (2) Do college students who are interested in science attribute
their interest to interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were also
interested in science and with whom they had a good relationship? (3) Do college
students who are uninterested in science perceive a lack of interest-raising interactions
with inﬂuential figures who were interested in science and with whom they had a good
relationship? (4) What perceived characteristics are associated with relationships that
facilitated the development of their interest in science? What perceived characteristics
are associated with relationships that hindered the development of their interest in
science?

Twenty-four college students were interviewed. The ﬁndings indicate that
interest in science is a rich and complicated entity. Most students had different levels of
interest in different areas of science. All participants in the interested group reported
interest-raising experiences with an inﬂuential ﬁgure(s). Nine out of the twelve students
mentioned inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested in science and/or practiced in a
science-related ﬁeld, and with whom the student had a good relationship. Seven students
in the uninterested group also mentioned interest-raising relationships similar to those

mentioned by the students in the interested group. One student in the interested group

 

 

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and three students in the uninterested group mentioned interest-lowering relationships
with inﬂuential ﬁgures.

Four qualities were associated with the interest-raising relationships: (1) The
inﬂuential ﬁgure was perceived as having a positive relation with science. (2) The
inﬂuential ﬁgure actively mediated the relation between the student and science. (3) The
inﬂuential ﬁgure conveyed, as well as created, positive emotions about science when s/he
did science with the student. (4) Between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and the student there
existed a personal relationship which was characterized by caring, sharing, and launching.

Interest-lowering relationships were characterized as lacking these qualities.

 

 

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my dissertation director, Dr. Douglas Campbell, for your caring attitude, skillful
guidance, and unconditional support. Your thoughtful and thought-provoking insights
and suggestions on every single draft were invaluable for my development as a

researcher.

To my chair, Dr. Stephen Yelon, for your wise advice and step-by-step guidance

throughout every phase of my dissertation research.

To my committee member, Dr. Jere Brophy, for opening my eyes to the world of
research on motivation, and helping me develop an understanding and appreciation of

what it means to be a researcher.

To my committee member, Dr. Don Hamachek, for your questioning, which challenged

me to think further and deeper on various issues related to my dissertation.

To my former advisor, Dr. David Wong, for your guidance at the earlier stage of my

Ph.D. program.

To my husband, szh-chyang Cherng, for listening to my struggles patiently, sharing my
achievement proudly, providing me with support unconditionally, and loving me whole-

heartedly.

To my parents, for being a strong motivating force in my life-long journey of reaching

higher goals.

 

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To my parents-in-law and other family members, for your encouragement, support, and

strong faith in my ability.

To the professors whose caring attitudes and powerful ideas have shaped my personal as
well as intellectual growth: Dr. Charles (Andy) Anderson, Dr. Betsy Becker,

Dr. Christopher Clark, Dr. Barbara Davis, Dr. James Gallagher, Dr. James Gavelek,

Dr. Frederick Lopez, Dr. John McKinney, Dr. Evelyn Oka, Dr. Penelope Peterson,

Dr. Richard Prawat, Dr. Stephen Raudenbush, Dr. Kathy Roth, Dr. Deborah Smith,

Dr. Edward Smith, Dr. John (Jack) Smith, Dr. Paul Stemmer, and Dr. Cho-yee To.

To my friends, Phone-mei Chou, Zongyi Deng, Marcia F etters, Shwu-yu Huang,
Francisca Kidder, Ailing Kong, Inkyung Lee, Ming-cheng Lo, Nicol Liu, Ai-hsuan Ma,
Hyesook Park, Deborah Sleight, Pei-fen Sung, Paul Vellom, Jian Wang, and

Li-wei Wang, for the heart-warming and intellectually stimulating conversations
throughout the various phases of planning and conducting the research as well as the

writing of my dissertation.

To my many friends, whose names are not mentioned here, for your encouragement,

support, and prayers.

To all the participants in the study who told me their stories. Without the generous

sharing of your ideas and experiences, it would have been impossible for me to develop

the insights discussed in this dissertation.

vi

To my friend, Eunice Loeweke, whose painstaking proof-reading of the multiple drafts
supported me to develop and clarify my ideas in this dissertation as well as to express

them in a way that makes sense to others.
To my family’s very special friend, Hui-ying Tang, whose encouragement of my
academic effort from childhood to graduate school years provided the fertile ground for

all the intellectual fruit I shall bear.

Thank you!

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1
Statement of the Problem ......................................................................................... 2
Purpose of the Study ................................................................................................ 3
Research Questions .................................................................................................. 4
Methodological Limitations ..................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE ........................................................................ 7
Conceptualization of Science ................................................................................... 7
Conceptualization of Interest ................................................................................. lO
Rationale for This Study ........................................................................................ 13
Conceptualization of Interpersonal Relationships ................................................. 18
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES ............................ 22
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 22
Research Design ..................................................................................................... 23
Participants ............................................................................................................. 23
Data Collection Procedures .................................................................................... 24
Data Analysis Procedures ...................................................................................... 26
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS .................................................................................................... 29
Meaning of Interest in Science (R.Q.#l) ............................................................... 29
Interpersonal Relationships and Interest in Science (R.Q.#2) ............................... 66
Interpersonal Relationships and Lack of Interest in Science (R.Q.#3) .................. 76
Qualities of Interest-raising Relationships and Interest-lowering Relationships
(R.Q.#4) ................................................................................................................. 92
CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, AND DISCUSSION ............................... 118
Summary of Findings ........................................................................................... 118
Conclusions and Practical Implications ............................................................... 121
Discussion ............................................................................................................ 122
Final Note ............................................................................................................. 134
APPENDIX ...................................................................................................................... 135
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 138

viii

 

 

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Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6

Table 7

Table 8

Table 9
Table 10

Table 11

Table 12

LIST OF TABLES

Student Understanding of the Epistemological Nature of Science ................... 31
Life Relevance of Science................. ................................................................ 41
Science in Relation to Student Ability .............................................................. 47
Components in Students’ Talk of Interest ......................................................... 52
Student Interest in Science in General and in the Four Areas ........................... 57
Reasons for Differences between Interest in School and Interest Outside of
School ................................................................................................................ 6O
Characteristics of Interest-raising Relationships Mentioned by Participants in
the Interested Group .......................................................................................... 67
Characteristics of Interest-raising Relationships Mentioned by Participants in
the Uninterested Group ..................................................................................... 78
Relation between the Inﬂuential Figure and Science ........................................ 95
How the Inﬂuential Figure Mediated the Relation between the Student and
Science .............................................................................................................. 99
Emotions/Motivations Conveyed/Created between the Inﬂuential Figure and
the Student ....................................................................................................... 104
Personal Aspects of Interest-raising Relationships ......................................... 110

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Striving to understand what motivates people to learn is an enduring challenge in
educational psychology. Interest has long been recognized as a powerﬁil motivator to
promote learning (for review, see Hidi, 1990). This study seeks to forward understanding
about the origin and development of student interest in the particular domain of science.

The focus of this study was to examine how college students perceived
interpersonal relationships related to the development of their interest in science. Interest
in science refers to a relatively stable and enduring preference for learning science, which
includes learning the canon of knowledge and also learning the process of participation to
construct scientiﬁc knowledge both in and outside of school. The aspect of interpersonal
relationships that was addressed in this study was an individual’s perception of his/her
relationship with another person. An individual’s perception of his/her relationship with
another person was hypothesized to mediate the extent to which the individual would
develop an interest similar to that other person’s interest. Therefore, an individual’s
perception of his/her relationship with someone who bears a certain relation to science
(e.g., a science teacher, a scientist parent) was hypothesized to mediate the development
of the individual’s interest in science.

Twenty-four college students were interviewed to examine how they described the
nature, origin, and development of their interest or lack of interest in science, and what
factors they attributed their interest or lack of interest to. Patterns were sought across the

interviewees’ responses in relation to the focus of this study.

Statement of the Problem

One objective shared among science educators and classroom teachers is to help
students become interested in science. Yet it is clear that many students are not interested
in science (Harms & Yager, 1981; Hueftle, Rakow & Welch, 1983; Mullis & Jenkins,
1988; Simpson & Oliver, 1985) and there is a need to increase their interest. The need is
strong and urgent for two reasons. First, the future of our people, our nation, and our
world depends largely on the wisdom with which humans use science and technology
(Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1989). I believe that this wisdom will only come as a result of
students learning science well. Empirical evidence suggests that high student interest in a
domain enhances the quality of their learning in that domain (e. g. Asher, 1979, 1980;
Asher, Hymel & Wigﬁeld, 1978; Asher & Markell, 1974; Estes & Vaughan, 1973;
Fransson, 1977; Hidi, 1990; Prenzel, 1988; Renninger, 1988; Schiefele & Krapp, 1988).
Therefore, fostering student interest in science carries the potential to enhance the quality
of science learning by the student. Second, how much students can learn in classrooms is
always limited due to practical constraints. By developing student interest in science, we
can increase the likelihood that the student will continue to learn science outside the
classroom.

In order to foster student interest in science, we need to understand how people’s
interest in science starts and develops. However, little is known about this topic.
Although several factors have been identiﬁed to facilitate situational interest in various
contexts, few studies have explored factors related to the development of long-term
domain-speciﬁc interest. Deci’s self-determination theory offers a potentially fruitful
framework for examining this issue (Deci, 1992). In self-determination theory, interest is
closely linked to intrinsic motivation, but can become associated with extrinsically
motivated activities to the extent that their regulation has been integrated with one’s

intrinsic self (Deci & Ryan, 1991 ). Integration occurs as a result of internalization, the

process through which external regulation is actively transformed into internal regulation.
In other words, interest is a person’s dispositional preference toward a particular domain
of activities either for an intrinsic reason (i.e., enjoying the activity itself) or for a self-
determined instrumental reason (i.e., the activity leads to something the person truly
values, rather than being coerced to value). Self-determination theory hypothesizes that
three psychological needs are intrinsic to the self --- the needs for competence, autonomy,
and relatedness. It is hypothesized that social contexts that allow the satisfaction of these
three basic needs will promote intrinsic motivation, internalization, and interest.
Numerous studies have shown that competence-promoting information enhances interest,
whereas competence-diminishing information undermines interest (e.g., Boggiano &
Ruble, 1979; Deci, 1971; Deci & Cascio, 1972; Harackiewicz, 1979; Harackiexicz,
Abrahams, & Wageman, 1987; Ryan, 1982; Sansone, 1986, 1989; Vallerand & Reid,
1984). Empirical work has also shown that autonomy-supportive contexts tend to
enhance interest, whereas controlling contexts tend to diminish interest (e.g., Amabile,
DeJong, & Lepper, 1976; Deci & Cascio, 1972; Deci, Driver, Hotchkiss, & Robbins,
1993; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Deci, Schwartz, Sheinman, & Ryan, 1981; Zuckerman, Porac,
Lathin, Smith, & Deci, 1978; Koestner, Ryan, Bemieri, & Holt, 1984). However, little
has been done to understand the relationship between “relatedness” and the development
of domain-speciﬁc interest. The current investigation was undertaken to provide such

information.

Purpose of the Study
This study had three purposes: (1) to understand the nature of college students’
interest in science, (2) to explore whether college students perceived their interpersonal

relationships affected their development of interest in science, and (3) to investigate what

qualities of perceived interpersonal relationships had what effects in the development of

student interest in science.

Research Questions

To accomplish the above-mentioned purposes, the following research questions

were posed to guide the collection of data for this study:

1.

What do college students mean when they say they are interested in science or
uninterested in science? (Four areas of interest in science were explored: (1) interest
in learning more about the canon of science knowledge in school, (2) interest in
learning more about the canon of science knowledge outside of school, (3) interest in
ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge in school, (4) interest in ﬁguring out scientiﬁc
knowledge outside of school.)

Do college students who are interested in science attribute their interest to interest-
raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were also interested in science and
with whom they had a good relationship?

Do college students who are uninterested in science perceive a lack of interest-raising
interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested in science and with whom
they had a good relationship?

What perceived characteristics are associated with relationships that facilitated the
development of their interest in science? What perceived characteristics are
associated with relationships that hindered the development of their interest in

science?

Methodological Limitations

This study involved interview processes based on perceptions and self-reported

retrospective data. I recognize two limitations of the method. First, the participants’

memories might not have been completely accurate. Second, while hearing the interview
questions the participants might have attempted to guess what the researcher wanted and
constructed their responses to please the researcher.

The ﬁrst limitation reminds us that a participant’s perception of another person
and their relationship might not reﬂect the objective truth about that person or how they
actually interacted. The interview data can better tell us how the participant makes sense
of his/her relationship with another person and how s/he sees it inﬂuence his/her
development of interest in science, than it can tell us the objective truth about what the
other person actually did to the participant or what actually happened between the two.
Yet I believe the former is important to understand, because whether or how a certain
relationship affects an individual’s development of interest in science ultimately depends
on how this individual makes sense of that relationship and comes to shape his/her
interest in science in the context of this relationship.

The second limitation can never be completely eliminated. Yet two steps were
taken to address the limitation. First, the interview questions were arranged in an order
so the broader questions were asked before the more speciﬁc questions. This was done to
make it harder for the participant to “guess what the researcher wanted.” Second, before
each interview, the participant was informed that there were no “correct answers” to the
interview questions, there was not a certain kind of response that the researcher was
looking for, his/her performance in the interview would not be “evaluated,” and s/he
should be free to say whatever s/he felt honest to say.

Based on the reasons discussed above, I believe that the method used in the study
was a legitimate approach to further our understanding about how college students
perceive interpersonal relationships related to their development of interest in science.
The goal of this study was to explore the potentially existing patterns in the development

of student interest in science as affected by perceived interpersonal relationships, and to

generate directions for future investigation. Slight inaccuracy of memory should not
hinder the pursuit of this goal. Even though the interview questions might have led the
participants to talk about certain aspects of their experiences more than other aspects, this
does not necessarily mean that they would be untruthful. Even though the participants
might have tried to please the researcher, their responses were more likely based on some
concrete experiences.

A further limitation of the study lies in the method by which the study group was
recruited. The participants were 24 college students taking certain psychology courses.
The participants were not randomly selected from a certain population. The study
reﬂected the experiences and perceptions of the students who chose to participate.
Students who chose not to participate might have had different experiences and
perceptions regarding their development of interest in science. Although I believe the
participants have captured a certain degree of diversity in the college population at
Michigan State University, the results of the study can not be generalized to a larger
population. Nevertheless, the study can be “generalized to a theory” through analytic
generalization (Firestone, 1993). According to Firestone, “to generalize to a theory is to
provide evidence that supports (but does not deﬁnitively prove) that theory.” Through
analytic generalization, the ﬁndings of this study, taken together with ﬁndings related to
the same issues obtained in other contexts, will contribute to the developing of a theory,

identifying the scope of the theory, and establishing the generalizability of the theory.

CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter contains a review of literature pertinent to the topic under
investigation, and my own thinking in relation to the existing literature is woven into the
discussion. These two components together provide a conceptual background that has
motivated and helped to frame the current study. In the following sections, I will ﬁrst
describe how the conceptualization of science and the conceptualization of interest in this
study were constructed based on the literature and on my observations of related
phenomena. Then I will discuss how existing research suggests that it is critical to
investigate the role of interpersonal relationships in mediating the development of student

interest in science, and how interpersonal relationships were conceptualized in this study.

Conceptualization of Science

Anderson described learning science as involving mastery of both a canon of
knowledge and norms for participation (Anderson, 1992). The canon consists of the
collected works of present and past members of the scientiﬁc community. The shared
norms for participation form the basis to allow a community of people to work together to
build the canon of knowledge. Mastering the canon of knowledge involves developing
conceptual understanding of the accumulated knowledge in scientiﬁc communities.
Mastering the norms for participation involves learning ways that scientists use to
generate knowledge, both individually and as social groups.

Mastering the canon of knowledge in science involves what is commonly called
“science content knowledge learning.” Examples of content knowledge learning include
understanding the basic structure of a cell, the principle of ﬂoating and sinking, the

process of a chemical reaction, and so forth. Mastering ways that scientists use to

generate knowledge involves what Lemke describes as “talking science,” which means
“observing, describing, comparing, classifying, analyzing, discussing, hypothesizing,
theorizing, questioning, challenging, arguing, designing experiments, following
procedures, judging, evaluating, deciding, concluding, generalizing, reporting, writing,
lecturing, and teaching in and through the language of science” (Lemke, 1990). Scholars
have argued that the essence of all these scientiﬁc activities is “coordinating theories and
evidence” (Kuhn, 1989; Carey & Smith, 1993).

Since learning science contains the two components described above (i.e.,
mastering the canon of knowledge and the norms for participation), there is no guarantee
that one would always be equally interested (or uninterested) in both of them. Some
students might be interested in knowing and understanding science “facts” and
“concepts” without being interested in participating in the process of “ﬁguring out” the
knowledge. These students might seek to read science books, and be eager to tell others
about the knowledge they acquired from reading books, while at the same time they
might rarely ask a question or try an experiment to ﬁnd out the answer to their question.
Some other students, while being less interested in science book reading, might be indeed
very interested in trying out experiments to ﬁgure out answers to their own questions.
Therefore, this study included the distinction in its design that some students might be
interested in one aspect of science but not in the other.

Another distinction that was made in the study was the distinction between
science in school and science outside of school. Some students might not be very
attentive during their science lessons in school. However, they would go to a library and
seek to read science books for their own interest. I myself was not enthused about the
high school science experiments we had to conduct in our lab, but I was very curious
about things around the house and often designed experiments to ﬁgure out answers to

my own questions.

Based on the distinctions discussed above, four aspects of student interest in
science were addressed in this study: (1) interest in learning more about the canon of
science knowledge in school (e.g., listening to science lectures, reading science
textbooks, etc.), (2) interest in learning more about the canon of science knowledge
outside of school (e.g., seeking to read science books or magazines, watching TV
programs about cancers, polymers, outer space, animals and plants, etc.), (3) interest in
ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge in school (e.g., doing experiments in school to ﬁgure
out answers to some questions, participating in classroom discussions about science
topics, etc.), (4) interest in ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge outside of school (e.g.,
trying to understand the process of baking by varying temperature or ingredients and
analyzing the results, trying to understand the function of a device such as a car, a watch,
or a sewing machine by manipulating it in various ways, participating in discussion about
science topics with friends or family members, etc.).

Let me explain a little more why I chose to make the above described distinctions
in this study. I see the importance of learning science not only lies in preparing future
scientists, but also in preparing future citizens and enriching the life of current citizens so
they can generate and use scientiﬁc knowledge in wise ways when they participate in a
democratic society. In order to reach this goal, science needs to be learned not only as
sets of facts to be understood and remembered, but also as processes of inquiry for
generating new knowledge, not as something that we are required to learn in school and
often ﬁnd no use for it in our life, but as something we want to take an initiative to learn
more about in meaningful ways outside of school. While holding this belief in mind, I
am aware that this belief might not be shared by many students, because most students
acquire their image of science from their experiences of school science and school
science, as practiced in many classrooms, tends to focus merely on content knowledge

learning. Some students might be doing science outside of school (e.g., pursuing their

curiosity by reading or trying things out) without calling it science. Therefore, making
these distinctions explicit in my study was meant to help reveal information about student
interest in science which addresses the four areas of science, and to avoid the possibility
that the participants might not automatically address all four areas because they are likely

to use the word “science” in a narrower way.

Conceptualization of Interest

Although most investigators acknowledge that interest occurs in a person-activity
interaction, researchers often focus on one of the two components. One body of research
has concentrated more on the characteristics of learning activities that capture the interest
of many individuals (situational interest); the other body of research has emphasized
variations in individual interest (people’s relatively enduring preference for certain topics
or activities) (for review, see Hidi, 1990). For the purpose of this study, I chose the
development of individual interest in science as my central focus, because individual
interest in science is what we want to foster in our students for their life-long science
learning. However, while conducting the study, I didn’t exclude the possibility that one’s
experiences of situational interest might contribute to the development of long-term
individual interest. In fact, this possibility was explored in the interviews.

What is individual interest? When we say someone is interested in something,
quite often we mean that he likes to pursue it and he enjoys it. One example would be
someone being interested in playing the piano. This person is likely to spend his free
hours playing the piano and enjoying the activity for its own sake. Individual interest in
this example is what psychologists have called intrinsic motivation, the motivation to do
certain things in the absence of any operationally separable reinforcement (i.e., in the
absence of an extrinsic reward) (e.g., Lepper & Hodell, 1989; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990;

Deci, 1992). But do we always enjoy the activities we are interested in for its own sake?

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Probably not. One example here would be someone who is interested in studying the
stock market. This person is likely to ﬁnd time to study the stock market, but he is not
doing it purely for the sake of studying. He is trying to earn money through it.
Individual interest in this example is not intrinsic motivation, because the activity the
person chooses to engage in is instrumental. However, it does lead to something that is
of value to the person.

Deci’s self-determination theory discusses the relation between interest, intrinsic
motivation, and value in details (Deci, 1992). From the self-determination theory
perspective, interest is closely linked to intrinsic motivation, but can become associated
with extrinsically motivated activities to the extent that their regulation has been
integrated with one’s intrinsic self (Deci & Ryan, 1991). Integration occurs as a result of
internalization, the process through which external regulation is actively transformed into
internal regulation (Ryan & Connell, 1989; Ryan, Connell, & Deci, 1985). In other
words, individual interest is a person’s dispositional preference toward a particular
domain of activities either for an intrinsic reason (i.e., enjoying the activity itself) or for a
self-determined instrumental reason (i.e., the activity leads to something the person truly
values, rather than being coerced to value).

This deﬁnition is highly related to the concept of continuing motivation discussed
by Maehr. Maehr (1984) describes ﬁve behavioral patterns that can be used as indices of
motivation related to learning. One of the ﬁve is “continuing motivation,” which refers
to “the return to a previously encountered task or task area on one’s own, without
apparent external constraint to do so.” I think that Maehr’s construct “continuing
motivation” has captured the essence of what I call “interest.” Both are related to the
hypothetical psychological construct that motivates spontaneous return to tasks in a
particular domain. However, Maehr emphasized the behavior of “returning to the

previously encountered task area” as an index for “continuing motivation.” While

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agreeing with Maehr that the behavioral index serves well operationally, I also think that
interest may exist without observable behavior. For example, one student might want to
learn more science if he has the opportunity to do so. However, the school he attends
does not allow electives, and his family responsibilities do not allow him to do science
outside of school. For this student, we would not be able to assess his “continuing
motivation” based on any behavior index, but we can assess his “interest” by interviewing
him. Therefore, in this study, I have attempted to address interest in science by attending
to both self-reported behavior and intention.

The above-described conceptualization of individual interest is consistent with
what we see in related empirical studies. Most empirical studies which measured
individual interest measured one or more of the following three components: (1) a
positive affect toward certain topics or kinds of activities (e.g., liking, enjoying), (2) a
positive value toward certain topics or kinds of activities (e.g., importance, signiﬁcance),
and (3) a preference or tendency to pursue certain topics or kinds of activities (e.g.,
wanting to ﬁnd out more, voluntarily participating) (for review, see Schiefele, Krapp, &
Winteler, 1992).

Putting together Deci and Maehr’s theoretical thinking, the related empirical
studies, and my own reﬂection on the way the word interest is used in our daily life, I
believe that it was reasonable to assume that it was likely that the phrase “being
interested” would be understood and be used by the participants to refer to the preference
of pursuing certain topics or activities either for enjoying them or for leading to
something else which was of true value to them. However, it is important to remember
that an interview is a conversation between two people. It is a process through which two
people are constantly trying to understand each other. The conceptualization of
individual interest laid out here was the assumption that I brought into the study mostly

implicitly. In other words, I assumed that the participants in the study more or less

12

shared my understanding of the meaning of interest when they heard me use the word
interest and when they talked about their interest. Yet I also have to recognize that the
participants in the study might not have shared my conceptualization of interest.
Therefore, it was important that I make my assumption explicit here, so that we are aware
of the assumption, and at the same time, try to keep our eyes open for evidence that either

supports or disconﬁrrns the assumption I held.

Rationale for This Study

Now that we have discussed what individual interest is, let me say a word about
why the development of individual interest is important. Individual interest has been
shown to result in higher attention, recognition, and recall in three-year olds (Renninger,
1987; Rinninger & Wozniak, 1985), better reading retention and inferencing in fourth
graders (Estes & Vaughan, 1973), better mathematical problem solving in ﬁfth and sixth
graders (Renninger, 1988), higher reading comprehension in ﬁfth and sixth graders and
college students (Asher, 1979, 1980; Asher, Hymel & Wigﬁeld, 1978; Asher & Markell,
1974; Fransson, 1977), and a higher degree of cognitive organization in college students’
knowledge structures (Schiefele & Krapp, 1988). In summary, empirical evidence
suggests that individual interest facilitates learning in various domains.

How is individual interest developed in a particular domain? Based on the
conceptualization of individual interest as containing the component of intrinsic
motivation and/or the component of integrated value, I will ﬁrst review relevant literature
on intrinsic motivation. The review will reveal a critical issue that has not been addressed
well by research on intrinsic motivation. This, then, will lead to the discussion of
integrated value and the relation between individual interest and interpersonal

relationships.

13

Intrinsic motivation is discussed and studied most often in the cognitive/rationalist
research tradition. In this tradition, children are seen as naturally motivated to learn when
their experience is inconsistent with their current understanding or when they experience
regularities in information that are not yet represented by their schemata (Greeno, Collins
& Resnick, 1996). Therefore, motivating students to learn involves ﬁguring out ways to
present inconsistencies to foster students’ natural tendencies to learn and understand.

Yet we know that this view has not successfully explained the individual difference of
interest in science based on our experience with conceptual change teaching. Conceptual
change teaching in science education was developed based on the above mentioned
assumption (Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982; Strike & Posner, 1992). In a
lesson designed with a conceptual change model, groups of students are presented with a
set of scientiﬁc phenomena and asked to talk about their ideas about those phenomena.
The inconsistencies between their ideas and the observations are made salient. Then the
students are asked to test out their ideas by making more observations and/or conducting
more experiments. Through the whole process of discussing, observing and
experimenting, the educators help the students to coordinate their ideas and the evidence
they have gathered and to modify their ideas. Research indicates that conceptual change
teaching has achieved some success but has not helped all students (e. g., Smith, 1990).

My personal experience with conceptual change teaching is consistent with this
research ﬁnding. The typical pattern I see in a conceptual change classroom is that there
are always some students who are actively engaged in this learning activity. They might
not always have the right ideas, but they are “into the game.” At the same time, there are
always some students who are simply “not into the game.” They do not seem to care
whether a particular idea is consistent with the observation or not. This pattern suggests
that the assumption commonly held by the cognitive/rationalist view about intrinsic

motivation does not hold for all students all the time.

14

If I examine my own beliefs about various topics carefully, I can ﬁnd that I hold
many ideas that are mutually contradictory. I often do not examine my own beliefs
seriously and try to ﬁgure out why I believe them and which belief among the mutually
contradictory ones might be more accurate. I believe many others, if not all, also hold
contradictory ideas in their mind. They might sometimes choose to strive for a deeper
understanding of some of their ideas, but they leave many other contradictory ideas
untouched.

Based on research ﬁndings and my personal observations described above, it
seems that when someone has chosen to focus his attention on a topic, a cognitive
disequilibrium in that topic becomes a motivator to push him to strive for a deeper
understanding. However, a cognitive disequilibrium would not function in this way when
that person does not choose to focus his attention on that topic. In other words, cognitive
disequilibrium per se is not enough to explain the ultimate origin of intrinsic motivation.
Its explanatory power is particularly weak when we consider domain-speciﬁc interest,
because it does not explain how one chooses the domain he wants to focus on. As

Brophy (1998) pointed out,

We know a lot about motivation in achievement situations in which one is
striving to accomplish clear goals and one’s relative success or failure in
doing so is assessed with reference to standards of excellence. However,
we know much less about motivation in exploratory learning or
appreciation development situations that do not involve seeking to achieve
explicitly delineated goals. . .We also know that preexisting interest in a
topic can lead to deeper processing and better retention of new information
about the topic, although we know much less about how to induce and
nurture such interest if it is not already present.

Most of the recent empirical work on the development of individual interests
deals with young children in play situations (e.g., Krapp & F ink, 1986; Renninger, 1989,
1990; Renninger & Wozniak, 1985). It has been found that young children have
relatively strong, stable, and focused interests that vary widely among individuals.

However, we do not know whether these early individual interests lead to long-term

15

domain-speciﬁc interest, nor do we know how to encourage them. Csikszentrnihalyi
(1988) raised questions in regard to why a person becomes interested in information in a
particular domain and in regard to how strong interest originates. He suggested that
perhaps precocious interest in some aspect of the environment might be based on a
peculiar sensitivity to those stimuli, a sensitivity that is either inborn or developed early
as a result of interaction with others who are also interested in the same range of
phenomena. Csikszentrnihalyi’s idea about “interaction with others” is consistent with
Vygotsky’s theory of human development and learning. In Vygotsky’s discussion of

internalization of higher psychological functions, he stated that

every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: ﬁrst, on
the social level, and later, on the individual level; ﬁrst, between people
(interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This
applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the
formation of concepts. (Vygotsky, 1978).

Science certainly has its cultural value, and being interested in science certainly involves
paying attention to science and forming concepts about science. Bandura’s social
cognitive theory also states that virtually all learning phenomena, resulting from direct
experience, can occur vicariously by observing other people’s behavior and its
consequences for them (Bandura, 1986). Therefore, it might be possible that the child
could observe how others do science and experience excitement in science and hence
learn to like science. In other words, Csikszentmihalyi, Vygotsky, and Bandura all seem
to suggest that it is reasonable to hypothesize that through interaction with others who are
interested in science, the child might internalize that interest and make it his own.

The above described hypothesis, however, does not explain one phenomenon.
Every individual encounters many people in his life. Each one of these people has his
own interests. An individual does not develop shared interests with all the people he has
interacted with. This hypothesis does not explain the reasons that cause one’s interests to

be inﬂuenced by some people but not by others.

16

Deci’s self-determination theory carries the potential to help us further understand
why an individual does or does not develop an interest similar to another person’s
interest. The self-determination theory proposes that three basic psychological needs are
intrinsic to the self --- the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Deci, 1992;
Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991). It is hypothesized that social contexts that
allow the satisfaction of these three basic needs will promote intrinsic motivation,
internalization, and interest (Ryan & Powelson, 1991; Ryan & Stiller, 1991). Since we
form different relationships with different people, it is possible that the quality of these
relationships mediate the extent to which we develop interests similar to other people’s
interests. Numerous studies have shown that competence-promoting information
enhances interest, whereas competence-diminishing information undermines interest
(e.g., Boggiano & Ruble, 1979; Deci, 1971; Harackiewicz, 1979; Ryan, 1982; Deci &
Cascio, 1972; Vallerand& Reid, 1984; Harackiewicz, Abrahams, & Wageman, 1987).
Empirical work has also shown that autonomy-supportive contexts tend to enhance
interest, whereas controlling contexts tend to diminish interest (e.g., Amabile, DeJong, &
Lepper, 1976; Deci & Cascio, 1972; Deci, Driver, Hotchkiss, & Robbins, 1993; Deci &
Ryan, 1985; Deci, Schwartz, Sheinman, & Ryan, 1981; Zuckerman, Porac, Lathin, Smith,
& Deci, 1978; Koestner, Ryan, Bemieri, & Holt, 1984). Some other studies (e.g., Avery
& Ryan, 1988; Birch & Ladd, 1997; Roeser, Midgley, Urdan, 1996; Ryan, Stiller, &
Lynch, 1994; Wentzel, 1997) have explored how various qualities of relatedness
experienced with respect to parents, teachers, and/or friends by students were associated
with their school-related functioning and affect. However, these studies mainly assessed
general school-related constructs (e.g., school adjustment, perceived control over
academic outcome, perceived competence, self-esteem, academic effort, school-related
affect, etc.). Little research has directly addressed the relationship between “relatedness”

and the development of domain-speciﬁc interest (with the exception of Midgley,

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Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1989). Empirical effort is needed to clarify the role of “relatedness”
in mediating the development of domain-speciﬁc interest. This study is an empirical

effort which contributes to this issue.

Conceptualization of Interpersonal Relationships

Most research on personal relationships is directed at one of three levels of
analysis: individual, dyadic and systemic (Sarason, Sarason, and Pierce, 1995). At an
individual level of analysis, a personal relationship can be deﬁned in terms of a
participant’s perception of his/her relationship with another person. At a dyadic level of
analysis, relationships are conceptualized primarily in terms of the social bond shared by
both participants. A systemic level of analysis seeks to account for the links, not only
between the two participants in a personal relationship, but also with others in the social
network who inﬂuence and are inﬂuenced by members of the target dyad. I view the
three levels as mutually complementary rather than mutually exclusive. This study took
an individual level of analysis based on the assumption that whether or how a certain
relationship affects an individual’s development of interest in science mainly depends on
how this individual makes sense of that relationship and comes to shape his/her interest in
the context of that relationship (Maehr, 1991).

Taking an individual level of analysis, I was primarily interested in the way a
participant perceived his or her relationship with the other person. The conceptualization
of this perception of interpersonal relationship was mainly developed from Bowlby’s
attachment theory (1973; 1980) and Baldwin’s idea of relational schemas (1992). In
Bowlby’s attachment theory and Baldwin’s idea of relational schemas, it is assumed that
people actively organize and internalize their interactions with signiﬁcant others. The
mental representations of the organized and internalized interactions with the signiﬁcant

others become the individual’s perceived relationships with the signiﬁcant others. The

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formed relationships shape the individual’s sense of self and the individual’s experience
of subsequent interactions with the same signiﬁcant others as well as with other people.

It was assumed that students’ interest in science should be shaped by their experiences of
engagement with science activities. During these engagements, there are often other
people (e.g., parents, science teachers, peers) involved. I assumed that students form
relational schemas with these people. Since relational schemas can shape one’s sense of
self (possibly including how one sees himself/herself in relation to science) and
subsequent interactions with other people (possibly including other people in science), it
is worth examining whether the student’s relational schemas affected his/her development
of interest in science, and if they did, how.

In attachment theory, Bowlby proposed that on the basis of regular interaction
with its attachment ﬁgure(s), the infant develops a mental representation of this (these)
relationship(s). Bowlby (1973, 1980) termed these mental representations “internal
working models.” Once formed, the internal working models shape not only the person’s
subsequent orientations to human relationships but also the person’s cognitive
development. This theory has recently been extended to the study of adult relationships
and development (e.g., Lopez, 1995). Numerous empirical studies have shown evidence
consistent with the notion that early attachment qualities are related to the individual’s
social-emotional development (for review, see Grossmann & Grossmann, 1993) and
cognitive development (for review, see de Ruiter & van Ijzendoorn, 1993; Moss, Parent,
Gosselin, & Dumont, 1993), e.g., qualities of romantic relationships (Hazan & Shaver,
1987), exploratory competence (e.g., Tracy, F arish, & Bretherton, 1980; Hazen & Durett,
1982), and persistence in problem solving tasks (e.g., Matas, Arend & Sroufe, 1978;
Frankel & Bates, 1990), etc. However, the exact mechanisms for the attachment quality

to inﬂuence the person’s subsequent development is not yet clear.

19

I found Baldwin’s idea of relational schemas (Baldwin, 1992) promising in regard
to helping us further understand how people’s interpersonal relationships inﬂuence their
subsequent social-emotional and/or cognitive development. Similar to attachment theory,
Baldwin’s conceptualization of interpersonal relationships assumes that people develop
working models of their relationships that function as cognitive maps to help them
navigate their social world. These cognitive structures are hypothesized to include
images of self and other, along with a script for an expected pattern of interaction. It is
important to note that in this conceptualization, the images of self and other are images of
self and other in relation, rather than self and other in isolation. Ogilvie and Ashmore’s
deﬁnition of the “self-with-other” construct (1991) illustrates the idea of self and other in
relation. Ogilvie and Ashmore deﬁned the “self-with-other” construct as a mental
representation that includes the set of personal qualities (traits, feelings, and the like) that
an individual believes characterizes his or her self when with a particular other person. In
a similar way, one can deﬁne “other-with-self” as a mental representation that includes
the set of personal qualities (traits, feelings, and the like) that an individual believes
characterizes the other when that other person is with this individual. It seems reasonable
to hypothesize that through interactions with another person who bears a certain
relationship with science, a student would develop a relational understanding of
himself/herself and that other person. Since this understanding includes speciﬁed
personal qualities that the individual believes characterizes his or her self, it might affect
the student’s development of his/her sense of self in relation to science, likely including
his interest in science.

Building on the ideas discussed above, a conceptualization of science as including
learning about the canon of science knowledge and the process of constructing scientiﬁc
knowledge both in and outside of school, and a conceptualization of interest as a person’s

dispositional preference toward a particular domain of activities either for an intrinsic

20

reason or for a self-determined instrumental reason were used to form the design of this
interview study, which sought to forward our understanding of the nature, origin, and
development of student interest or lack of interest in science with the focus on how
students perceive interpersonal relationships related to the development of their interest in

science.

21

CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES

Introduction

Based on the conceptual framework described in Chapter 2, I hypothesized that a
leamer’s perception of the quality of his/her relationship with a person mediates the
extent to which the learner will develop an interest similar to that other person’s interest.
In other words, people tend to develop shared interests with people with whom they
perceive that they have had good relationships. If this hypothesis is true, we should see
that students who are interested in science had earlier interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures
who were also interested in science and with whom the students had a good relationship.
We should also see students who are uninterested in science lacked earlier interactions
with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested in science and with whom they had a good
relationship. To examine these predictions of the hypothesis empirically, I interviewed
24 college students about their development of interest or lack of interest in science in
order to explore what experiences, from their own point of view, made them become
interested or uninterested in science, and whether their experiences were consistent with
the above-mentioned hypothesis. During the analysis, particular attention was paid to
whether interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested in science were
important and whether good relationships with the inﬂuential ﬁgures were important for
the development of student interest in science. From the students’ descriptions of their
interpersonal experiences related to the development of their interest in science, I
explored the qualities of the interpersonal relationships that facilitated or hindered the

development of their interest in science as reﬂected from their own point of view.

22

Research Design

I investigated the role that interpersonal relationships play in the development of
interest in science by conducting clinical interviews with 24 college students at Michigan
State University to examine how they described the nature, origin and development of
their interest or lack of interest in science, and what factors they attributed their interest or
lack of interest to. When any interpersonal relationship was mentioned, probing
questions were used to explore the characteristics of that relationship that facilitated or
hindered the development of interest in science. Six participants were males interested in
science, six were males uninterested in science, six were females interested in science,

and six were females uninterested in science.

Participants

Participants in the study were recruited from a few undergraduate psychology
courses at Michigan State University during the fall semester of 1997 through the subject
pool established by the Department of Psychology at MSU. All the research projects
which were recruiting participants from the subject pool were posted to the students.
Students in the subject pool were encouraged to sign up for the research projects they
would like to participate in based on the project’s title, restrictions for certain
characteristics of the participants, the amount of time required, and the schedule. The
title of this project was posted as “understanding the development of student interest or
lack of interest in science.” The amount of time required was one and a half hours.
Various time slats were offered for potential participants to sign up. I also offered the
opportunity for each potential participant to set a time with me that will work for both of
us. Students were given some extra credits in their psychology courses for their

participation in these research projects. The policy for extra credits varied from instructor

23

to instructor. It generally contributed to about 5% of the ﬁnal grade for 2 to 5 hours of
participation in research projects.

Several factors should be taken into account when one considers the
generalizability of this study. Here I will ﬁrst discuss two factors that contributed to the
limitation of the generalizability, and then I will discuss why the extent of the limitation
should be within reasonable range. First, students who chose to take a particular course
might share certain common interests. Therefore the group I recruited my participants
from would not have been a completely unbiased subgroup of the MSU college student
population. Second, the sign-up procedure could also have biased the sample because
certain students might have chosen to or not chosen to participate in this particular project
because of their feeling and considerations about the title, characteristics asked, schedule
posted, and amount of time required. However, since all undergraduate students are
required to take certain credits from a limited number of introductory courses, these
courses often attract a wide variety of students. The posted amount of time required for
the interview was one and a half hours, which would give them 3 extra credits when the
number of extra credits encouraged by their instructor ranged from 4 to 10. This made
my project not unreasonably time-consuming or unrewarding. I also tried to make the
schedule as ﬂexible as possible by providing opportunities for each participant to discuss
with me the best time to do the study. Taking into consideration the limitations for
generalizability and the features of participant recruiting process that helped to address
the limitations, I believe the participants of this study reasonably captured some diversity

of MSU student population.

Data Collection Procedures

In order to understand how college students describe the nature, origin, and

development of their interest or lack of interest in science and what factors they attribute

24

their interest or lack of interest to, a semi-structured interview protocol was developed for
the present study (see Appendix). The protocol contained several features to facilitate
examination of the issues addressed in the study. First, in order to understand the
student’s development of interest in science, we need to understand what science means
to the student. The protocol started with several opening questions concerning the
student’s understanding of the nature of science (e. g., “When you think about science,
what comes to your mind?” and “What kind of things do you think people do when they
are doing science?”).

Second, after the student talked about his/her understanding of the nature of
science, the protocol provided opportunities for the student to talk about his/her interest
in science in his/her own way (e.g., “ Are you interested in science?” and “Can you give
me a few examples of the kinds of things you would do because of your interest in
science?”)

Third, after providing the student with opportunities to talk about the nature of
science and his/her interest in science in his/her own way, the protocol speciﬁed four
areas of science (learning the canon of science knowledge in school, learning the canon of
science knowledge outside of school, ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge in school,
ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge outside of school) in order to address the student’s
interest in each one of them.

Fourth, regarding the factors that might have affected the development of the
student’s interest in science, the protocol ﬁrst provided opportunities for the student to
mention factors that were important to the student (e.g., “Why are you interested in
science?” “Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest in science?”), and
later asked about the possible existence of inﬂuential interpersonal relationships (e.g., “Is

there any person in your life who has affected your interest in science?”). This was done

25

to examine what factors were important to the student, and where interpersonal
relationships stood among them.

Fifth, the protocol consisted of questions that probed the qualities of the
inﬂuential interpersonal relationships in depth (e.g., “What did that person do to make
you interested in science?” “How would you describe your interaction with this person?”
“Can you come up with some adjectives to describe this person?” “What was your
interest in science like before interacting with this person?” “What was your interest in
science like after interacting with this person?”).

During the interviews, probing questions were used to clarify the points the
interviewees attempted to make. When any interpersonal relationship was mentioned,
probing questions were used to explore the characteristics of that relationship, particularly
those which facilitated or hindered the development of interest in science. All the
interviews were conducted in a quiet room, and were audio-recorded with the permission

of the interviewees. The complete interview protocol is in the Appendix.

Data Analysis Procedures

The data analysis procedures combined both the conventional hypothesis testing
approach and the constant comparative method of qualitative analysis (Glaser & Strauss,
1967). This combination allowed me to examine evidence related to the guiding
hypothesis in order to evaluate its accuracy, as well as to ﬁnd patterns that emerged from
the data. Research question #2 (Do college students who are interested in science
attribute their interest to interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were
also interested in science and with whom they had a good relationship?) and research
question #3 (Do college students who are uninterested in science perceive a lack of
interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested in science and

with whom they had a good relationship?) were generated from the hypothesis that

26

guided this study. Therefore, the data relevant to these two research questions were ﬁrst
organized and interpreted for the purpose of testing the guiding hypothesis. Numbers of
participants in the interested group who attributed their interest to interest-raising
interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were also interested in science and with whom
they had a good relationship and numbers of participants in the uninterested group who
perceived a lack of interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were
interested in science and with whom they had a good relationship were obtained to
examine the extent the ﬁndings supported the predictions from the hypothesis. Then, the
constant comparative method was used to ﬁnd patterns from the data. Research question
#1 (What do college students mean when they say they are interested in science or
uninterested in science?) and research question #4 (What perceived characteristics are
associated with relationships that facilitated the development of interest in science? What
perceived characteristics are associated with relationships that hindered the development
of interest in science?) are more open ended by their nature. Therefore, the data relevant
to research questions #1 and #4 were analyzed only by the constant comparative method.

Based on Glaser and Strauss’ constant comparative method, I went through three
stages of qualitative analysis.

(1) Formulating categories and comparing incidents applicable to each category:
At this stage, I read and re-read the entire transcript thoroughly for each student, trying to
see as much as possible anything that was potentially pertinent to my topic. Anything
that was noticed as potentially interesting to follow up was recorded as a tentative
category in a matrix. The matrix was formatted so that a row represented a single
participant, and a column represents each tentative category I constructed. After all
tentative categories I could possibly form were already recorded in the matrix, I went

through each transcript once more to code evidence in this matrix. While coding an

27

incident for a category, I compared it with the previous incidents in the same and
different category.

(2) Integrating categories and their properties: As coding proceeded, this constant
comparison of the incidents very soon started to generate theoretical properties of the
category. As the coding continued, the constant comparative units changed from
comparison of incident with incident to comparison of incident with properties of the
category that resulted from initial comparisons of incidents. In addition, the diverse
properties themselves started to become integrated. Revisions of categories were made
when I could combine two or more tentative categories into one integrated category
which was conceptually more meaningful in terms of making contrasts among
participants.

(3) Development of claims with relevant evidence organized around the claims:
At the third stage, comparisons were ﬁrst made between the interested group and the
uninterested group, and between male and female to examine whether any differential
pattern existed between groups. Patterns that emerged during the process of analysis will

be presented and discussed in Chapter 4.

28

CHAPTER 4
RESULTS

This chapter presents research ﬁndings for each of the four research questions
addressed in the study. The descriptions involve comparing and contrasting patterns

among students with different interest levels in science.

Meaning of Interest in Science (R.Q.#l)

Research Question #1 examines what college students mean when they say they
are interested in science or uninterested in science. The ﬁndings with regard to this
research question will be discussed in two parts. The ﬁrst part addresses what science
meant to the participants; the second part addresses what interest in science meant to the

participants.

R.Q.#1-1. What did Science Mean to the Participants?

In order to understand the nature of students’ interest or disinterest in science, I
ﬁrst strove to understand what science meant to the participants. Throughout the
interview, the participant had many opportunities to talk about his/her experiences,
understanding, beliefs, and feelings about science. The analysis revealed that the most
frequently mentioned aspects of science included the following three: A, the
epistemological nature of science, B, life relevance of science, and C, science in relation
to the student’s ability. Findings with regard to each of the three aspects will be

discussed.

29

R.Q.#1-1 .A. Epistemological Nature of Science

The ways the participants described epistemology of science fell into two
categories: (1) doing science involved acquiring facts/concepts from a source (e.g., a
more knowledgeable person, a book, or a TV program, etc.), (2) doing science involved a
process of ﬁguring out. Category (1) was ﬁtrther divided into two smaller categories:
(a) the student mentioned science as acquiring facts/concepts from a source without
describing it as memorization, and (b) the student mentioned science as acquiring
facts/concepts from a source with an emphasis on memorization. Category (2) was also
further divided into two smaller categories: (a) the student mentioned doing science as
ﬁguring out through making observations, manipulating/exploring, and/or trial and error,
without specifying the role of coordinating theories and evidence in this process, (b) the
student explicitly mentioned doing science as a process of coordinating theories and
evidence to forward understanding. It should be noted that it was possible for the same
student to mention more than one category in the interview. For example, a student could
have described science as reading books and listening to lectures in school, and as trial
and error outside of school, and also could have mentioned how people had coordinated
theories and evidence in the history of science. In other words, the four categories were
not mutually exclusive in the process of coding. Table 1 presents the results of all

participants’ responses regarding the four epistemological aspects of science.

30

Table 1

Student Understanding of the Epistemological Nature of Science

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Doing Doing Doing science Doing science
Interest science science involves a involves a
involves involves process of process of
acquiring memorization forwarding forwarding
facts/ understanding understanding
concepts through through
from a observation/ coordinating
source exploring/ theories and
trial and error evidence

Adam MI x x

Charles MI x x x

Mark MI x x

Richard MI x x x

Simon Ml x x

Tom MI x x x

Brice MU x x x x

Bert MU x x

Derek MU x x x x

David MU x x x

John MU x x x

Martin MU x x x x

Amelia F] x x

Andrea Fl x x x

Linda Fl x x x

Melissa Fl x x x

Rebecca Fl x x

Sarah FI x x

Anna FU x

Angela F U x x x

Edna FU x x x

Elza F U x x

Julie FU x x x

Theresa FU x x

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU:

male uninterested, FI: female interested, FU: female uninterested

31

 

Table 1 revealed that no differential pattern was found regarding the
understanding of the epistemological nature of science between the participants who were
interested in science and the participants who were uninterested in science except that
only uninterested participants mentioned science as memorization. Neither was there a
differential pattern between male and female participants regarding their understanding of
the epistemological nature of science. Twenty-one out of the 24 students either
mentioned or strongly implied that doing science involved acquiring knowledge from a
more knowledgeable person, a book, or a TV program. All twenty-four mentioned
episodes in which science was described as a process to forward understanding by
observing, manipulating, and/or trial and error without explicitly addressing the role of
coordinating theories and evidence. Fifteen students (i.e., 3 male interested, 5 male
uninterested, 4 female interested, 3 female uninterested) described the ﬁguring-out
process as a process of coordinating theories and evidence. Following are some examples
of the four ways the participants described the epistemological nature of science.

Adam (male, interested), John (male, uninterested), Amelia (female, interested),
Elza (female, uninterested) all had comments regarding science as acquiring knowledge

from a source (e.g., a more knowledgeable person, a book, or a video program).

Interviewer: What do you do when you do science?

Adam: I am doing that for school. Study and homework, a lot of
vocabulary, studying notes, getting ready for tests, reading
books.

From Adam’s comments, one can see that when Adam did science, he was acquiring
knowledge from notes and books. In the following examples, we will see that when John
and Amelia did science, they were acquiring knowledge from instructors and books. Elza
mentioned acquiring knowledge from a video tape.
Interviewer: Can you tell me some of your major experiences with
science?
John: ...I want to ﬂy (an airplane). The whole reason I am able

to ﬂy, I wasn’t understanding, so I decided to do research to
ﬁgure it out...

32

Interviewer:
John:

Interviewer:

Amelia:

Interviewer:

Elza:

How did you go with the research?

I have to ﬁnd the right resources. I had a ﬂight instructor.
I asked him, then I looked to books that have been
written...

10' It *

What do you think people do when they do science?

...If you are researching something, you are trying to learn
as much stuff about that particular topic. You go to a
library to look at people’s reports on the speciﬁc topic you
are researching

III III *

What kind of things do you do because of your interest in
science?

I remember that the doctor gave me a prescription of
medication. . .we looked it up in our book...

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Elza:

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

...I had a really good physics teacher in high school. . .We
would have homework assignments. Once my friend and I
did it together. It was understanding motion. It was to play
pool. . .First we watched a video on how to play pool.
There was this billiard player who was teaching us. He
said that there are diamonds on the side of the table. By
hitting a certain diamond a certain way with a certain
speed, he would hit this ball, then certain one would go

in. ..

As far as looking at science as acquiring facts/concepts from a source (e. g., a more

knowledgeable person, a book, a TV program, etc.), a differential pattern was found

between the interested group and the uninterested group. Almost all the participants (21

out of 24) mentioned this aspect of science during the interview. However, there was not

a single student in the interested group who described this process as memorization. Yet

four students (3 male, 1 female) in the uninterested group emphasized memorization in

their experience of science. Following are two examples (Brice: male, uninterested;

Edna: female, uninterested).

Interviewer:

Brice:

Can you tell me your interest level in each of the four
areas?

Area one, relatively low, one, because a lot of basic science
courses involve memorization. I have never liked picking

33

up a science book and memorizing facts and names and
different things...

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:
Brice:

Interviewer:
Edna:

Why did you never develop a strong interest in science?
The reason I am not greatly interested in it is because I have
never had any great interest in memorization, and the basic
things you need to do in order to become a scientist. The
basic things never seem that important to me. I never was
real interested in the parts of a ﬂower that I had to
memorize and things like that. I never saw how that would
impact my life real greatly...

* * *

What do you do when you do science?
I read a lot. I just memorize a lot, but I don’t remember. I
memorize for an exam. The next day it’s all gone.

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Edna:

Can you tell me some of your major experiences with
science?

...I would study. I would make ﬂash cards. Then I would
remember and take the test. When I am taking the test, I
would always think that they were trying to trick me with
some terms. I would read the questions differently than
they really were. I would never do good on that.

Regarding science as a ﬁguring-out process, many students mentioned making

observations, exploring, and/or using trial and error as being involved in this process,

without explicitly addressing the role of coordinating theories and evidence. Charles’

(male, interested) and Angela’s (female, uninterested) comments illustrate how

participants described making observations as being involved in doing science.

Interviewer:

Charles:

Interviewer:
Angela:

What was it that made your interest grow between age 5 or
6 to age 15?

Being around it, being exposed to it. . .For example, when I
was six or seven, there was a pond across the street. We
caught tadpoles and watched them grow into frogs.

III 1|! *

What do you think people do when they do science?
...Trying to ﬁnd out. . .Like chemistry in high school, we
mixed a couple of chemicals and found out what happened,
what they created together, what effect you got, things like
that, to ﬁnd out results...

34

Both Simon’s (male, interested) and Derek’s (male, uninterested) comments demonstrate

how students described science as a trial-and-error process to ﬁgure out new things

without explicitly addressing the role of coordinating theories and evidence.

Interviewer:
Simon:

Interviewer:
Simon:

Interviewer:
Derek:
Interviewer:
Derek:
Interviewer:
Derek:

What kind of things do you think people do when they are
doing science?

A lot of research, looking for new ways to solve problems,
alternative ways that things are explained.

Can you say a little bit more about what research is?
People work in the lab to ﬁnd a new vaccine. Play around.
Try different things. Record what happened. Trial and
error.

* * =0!

What do you think people do when they are doing science?
Science is a lot of research, experimentation.

Can you tell me a little bit more what research is?
Researching what has worked, what hasn’t worked.

Can you give me some examples?

I think kind of like a try and fail method. When I think
about testing drugs, they will try it on some sort of group,
then see if it works. That hasn’t worked, maybe use it
agam. ..

Consistent with the belief of certain scholars (Kuhn, 1989; Carey & Smith, 1993),

ﬁfteen participants described science as a ﬁguring-out process that involved coordinating

theories and evidence. The following four students’ comments, one from each of the four

groups (Richard: male interested, Brice: male uninterested, Andrea: female interested,

Julie: female uninterested), provide examples that show understanding regarding this

aspect of the epistemological nature of science.

Interviewer:

Richard:

Interviewer:

What kind of things do you think people do when they are
doing science?

...They are trying to come up with explanations why things
are a certain way. One thing about science is that you can’t
prove something is true. You can only prove things false.
One example would be Darwin’s theory of evolution. A lot
of scientists are working to see if his theory is really
working...

If a student from another country became your classmate,
and s/he told you that s/he never had science before in
his/her country, and s/he asked you, “What is science?”
how would you respond to him/her?

35

Richard:

Interviewer:
Richard:

...For science you have to have proofs to continue on with
science.

What constitutes a proof?

A proof to me would be something empirical, something
you can see is happening...

Here one can see that Richard pointed out that doing science involved both “coming up

with explanations” (theory) and “ﬁnding empirical proofs” (evidence). Similarly, Brice

described science as involving the development of ideas, hypotheses, theories, and laws,

as well as the importance of empirical data (evidence) in the process of supporting or

discrediting the hypotheses.

Interviewer:
Brice:

Interviewer:
Brice:
Interviewer:

Brice:

Interviewer:
Brice:

Interviewer:

Brice:

When you think about science, what comes to your mind?
A ﬁeld dedicated to the understanding of the world in
which we live.

Anything else?

I would think experimentation, research, the attempts to
understand things that previously were misunderstood or
not understood at all.

Can you tell me a little bit more: What is experimentation?
When I talk about experimenting, I am thinking about the
development of a hypothesis, testing that hypothesis,
developing theories, possibly laws in time, supporting or
defending or attacking one or another’s hypotheses about a
certain situation...

How do you do that? What constitutes a hypothesis?

A hypothesis is a belief, or an idea about the way, the
reason something is, that is based upon empirical data that
may have been collected by yourself or others. All
hypotheses, in my opinion, must be either defended or
credited by using empirical data, because that is the only
thing that can prove hypotheses.

Can you give me an example as to what a hypothesis would
be like, and how empirical data helps you to prove a
hypothesis?

A hypothesis might be that college students with black hair
do better on exams. And a way to test that would be to take
a random sample of college students, look at their hair color
and look at how they did on those tests, and use that data to
support or discredit the hypothesis.

Similar to Richard and Brice, Andrea described science as a process of developing ideas

(theory) and testing ideas (evidence); Julie phrased it as formulating a question and a

hypothesis (theory) and proving it with the research and the data (evidence).

36

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Julie:

Interviewer:

Julie:

Interviewer:

Julie:

What kind of things do you think people do when they are
doing science?

...Maybe growing different plants, doing experiments,
working in labs.

Can you say a little bit more about what an experiment is?
Coming up with the ways to try to test theories and
hypotheses. People have questions about many aspects of
science. . .lt’s just ways to ﬁnd out what things are true and
not true, and how things work.

How do experiments help to ﬁnd that out?

If you have an idea about how something works, why it is
the way it is, you can come up with a way to test and prove
it. You can prove it over and over, again and again. Then
it becomes accepted...

It It *

What kind of things do you think people do when they are
doing science?

I think they are constantly reworking the theories that are
already there, working out problems, trying things, trying
to perfect everything that’s already out there. We have to
expand our knowledge that’s already there.

What is a theory? How do they make it better or perfect it?
A theory is something like a hypothesis that was proven
and proven, again and again. I think it means that to be a
theory, it has to be able to be repeated like the experiment,
the whole thought, for people to understand it and agree
with it. I think a lot of people aren’t just going to accept it,
especially people in the ﬁeld of science. They are going to
work on it, and make sure that’s what it is.

What is a hypothesis?

It’s like the question that needs to be answered in the ﬁrst
place. It’s someone saying “I wonder why it’s this way,”
then they make a hypothesis to try to answer that question,
an educated guess, and they go about proving it with the
research and the data.

The examples given above have illustrated four ways the participants described

the epistemological nature of science: science as acquiring facts/concepts from a source,
science as memorization, science as forwarding understanding through
observation/exploring/trial and error, and science as forwarding understanding through
coordinating theories and evidence. Beyond the above-mentioned four epistemological
aspects of science, one pattern worth noting emerged from the data regarding the

learning/epistemology of science as experienced by the students. Five out of the total 24

37

students mentioned that science was often experienced in ways that were different from
authentic science. Four (3 male, 1 female) of the ﬁve students were in the uninterested
group. It seemed to suggest that either uninterested participants experienced unauthentic
science more, or they were more aware of this issue compared with interested
participants. Following are three interview vignettes that addressed the issue of
unauthentic science.

Brice (male, uninterested) described how experiments were not true experiments
when he commented on his interest in area three of the four areas of science: ﬁguring out

scientiﬁc knowledge in school.

Interviewer: ...Would you please think about each of the four areas of
science and tell me whether you are interested in each one
of them and why?

Brice: ...For area three it would be a 2 or 3, because again in my

experience with science, the experimentation has really not
truly been experimentation, because the outcome is already
known.

Derek (male, uninterested), similar to Brice, pointed out how school science often
included experiments which were not experiments that would lead you to new
discoveries.

Interviewer: Why did you have different interest levels for in school and
outside of school science?

Derek: When we try to ﬁgure out things in school, it’s different
than outside of school. . .One experiment, you can pretty
much tell what the outcome is going to be. At least I can.
Nothing was really amazing about it. I didn’t really learn
anything from the experiment. I can learn more just from
the introduction of the experiment. You can tell what’s
going to happen.

Julie (female, uninterested) started talking about how school science was different from
real world science when she was asked about what science is. Julie described school
science as book science, as learning about stuff that is already known to the scientists. In

contrast to that, a scientist is actually dealing with the stuff and doing something with it.

Interviewer: If a student from another country became your classmate,
and s/he told you that s/he never had science before and

38

asked you, “What is science?” how would you respond to
him/her?

Julie: I think science in the classroom is different than science in
the real world...

Interviewer: You noticed the difference between school science and the
real world science, can you say a little bit more about the
difference?

Julie: I think school science is following the book, like learning
about people you have to learn about for science, learning
about the theories, and how the theories apply to the world,
and learning all the numbers like I said before, like that
Avogadro I learned for chemistry, learning about the
protons and the neutrons. That’s book science. Someone
that’s a scientist already knows that stuff. That stuff is
known to them. They have to work with that stuff, and do
something with all that stuff. In school you have to learn
what’s in the liquid and how you balance the equation. For
a scientist, they are probably dealing with the actual liquids
or the actual solids. They have to do something with that.
We just learn in school like if this is heated, this is what
happens. The scientist in the real world is doing that. They
are doing.

From these three examples, one can see how Brice and Derek were aware that school
science was often unauthentic because the “experiments” did not help one to truly “ﬁnd
out” what would happen. The outcome was simply already known. Julie also pointed out
school science tried to teach students what was already known to scientists through
knowledge transmission. In contrast to that, scientists in the real world were not told in

this way. They were “doing.”

R.Q.#1-1.B. Life Relevance of Science

Two kinds of information were mentioned by the participants with regard to life
relevance of science: (1) whether science was related to the student’s own life or not, and
(2) whether science was helpful or harmful to people in general. The ﬁndings about each
of the two aspects is summarized in Table 2, followed by a discussion of this table.
A differential pattern between the interested group and the uninterested group was the
extent to which students in each group viewed science as related to everyday life. For the

interested group, the majority of students (9 out of 12 students) described science as

39

highly related to life. For the uninterested group, only two students described science as
highly related to life. Only one student in the interested group described science as
something that can be related to life sometimes, but often is not. Yet this is the way nine
students in the uninterested group described science. No student in the interested group
described science as completely not related to life, while one student in the uninterested
group did so. Two students (1 male, 1 female) in the interested group did not mention the

issue of relevance during the interview.

40

Life Relevance of Science

Table 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Science is Science is Science Science helps Science
Interest highly moderately is hardly people, solves can be

related to related to related problems, and harmful
life life to life improves life

Adam Ml x x

Charles MI x x

Mark Ml x

Richard MI x x x

Simon Ml x x

Tom Ml

Brice MU x x

Bert MU x x

Derek MU x

David MU x

John MU x

Martin MU x

Amelia F I x x

Andrea Fl x x

Linda Fl x x

Melissa Fl x

Rebecca Fl x

Sarah Fl x x

Anna FU x x

Angela FU x

Edna FU x

Elza FU x x

Julie F U x x

Theresa F U x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, Fl: female interested, F U: female uninterested

Charles’ (male, interested) and Sarah’s (Female, interested) comments will help

us see how students in the interested group described science as highly related to life.

Interviewer: Can you tell me some of your major experiences with
science?
Charles: ...My physics class in high school. I liked it. It was

challenging. I went to a Catholic school. An old priest was
our teacher. He wanted you to learn from the course. It’s
not only memorizing theories, but being able to apply the
things to your life. For instance, how sound waves travel in
the air so we hear things the way we do.

41

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Charles:

Interviewer:
Sarah:

In general, are you interested in science?

Yes. . .I want to major in nutritional science, to understand
chemistry, why certain foods are composed the way they
are, how they affect the body, why some things are good or
bad for us. The way I look at things, for instance,
biological reasons as to why things are happening outside,
why trees are certain colors, as opposed to being ignorant
about the way why it happens. The more information you
accumulate, the more you can relate to things you see in the
world. A lot of it has scientiﬁc roots why it’s a certain
way.

30‘ * *

Why are you interested in science?

Probably just like a cell can grow into a person. That’s just
a “wow.” That’s amazing. And like all these different
chemical reactions that keep your body alive. . .Even the air
we breathe has something to do with science. That has to
do with chemistry. You have to have oxygen in the air to
be able to breathe and to live. Science is all around us, but
I don’t think people think about that.

From the above examples, one can see that Charles emphasized the importance of

“applying science to your life” and “accumulating information in order to relate to the

world;” Sarah illustrated how science was all around us through things we do everyday

(e.g., breathing). In contrast to Charles and Sarah, Brice’s (male, uninterested) and

Julie’s (female, uninterested) comments will illustrate how students in the uninterested

group described science as something that could be related to life sometimes, but often

was not.

Interviewer:

Brice:

Can you say a little bit more about what characteristics of
those programs or magazine articles make them more
interesting?

The programs and magazine articles show practical things
in everyday happenings. Reading a textbook and learning
the anatomy of a frog is not a very practical thing for
someone unless it’s the ﬁeld of your study. . .I have not seen
the importance of dissecting a frog or a worm for myself,
because it’s not knowledge I will ever need...

Here Brice pointed out how certain programs and magazines made science “practical,”

while school science was often about knowledge that he did not think he would need.

42

Later on in the interview when Brice talked about his interest development curve, he

mentioned how he could not see the importance of certain aspects of science.

Brice: ...Science, certain aspects are very important, others are
almost, I don’t want to say trivial, but certain parts are
almost trivial. Botanist research, plants. There have been
plants on this planet since beginning, and there’s never any
research done, but farming still went on. You know, and I
mean it attempts to better that. I am not saying that it’s
completely not important, but there are other more
important things. A lot of scientiﬁc ﬁelds are almost
trivial. ..

When Julie was asked to learn something, she wanted to know how it can be applied to
life, but she often found that this desire was not satisﬁed when she was asked to learn

science. Hence, the “book part of science’ became irrelevant to her life.

Interviewer: Did you take science classes constantly through middle
school and high school?

Julie: Yes, we had to.

Interviewer: What number (interest level) might you give to those
classes?

Julie: ...There are some parts of physics that make sense to me.

Some parts I was like, “Why are we learning this?”. . .Some
teachers are able to say, “You are not just learning this
because I am telling you to learn it. You are learning it
because you can apply this to the world.” ...Tell me why I
am learning this. Tell me what I am going to do with it
after I leave your classroom everyday... Everything may be
applied. Like the chemistry I have taken. That might be
applied to the real world. I don’t know. But she didn’t
show me. She just said, “Here is the number. Plug it in the
equation.” Well, why do you want me to plug it in the
equation? Tell me why.

Interviewer: Can you tell me how your interest or lack of interest in
science plays out in your life?

Julie: I guess if I look at science as a hands-on kind of way to
learn things, it’s a big part of my life with the kids, learning
why they do the things they do, how they play the way they
do. . .If I apply the book part of science, then I’d say it
wouldn’t be a part of my life. The numbers and all the
names. All of that, no.

One student in the uninterested group described how hard it was for her to see science as

being related to everyday life.

Interviewer: What do you do when you do science?
Angela: Do you mean in class or do you mean in life?

43

Interviewer: Both.

Angela: As far as class, I always had science up to this year. I can’t
think of anything that I do in everyday life. It’s very hard
for me to relate.

From the above-mentioned examples, one might notice an interesting phenomenon. Both
Charles and Brice mentioned the study of plants as a topic in science. Yet Charles
perceived it as a way to help him “relate to things he sees in the world,” while Brice
perceived it as almost trivial. Both Sarah and Julie mentioned something related to
chemical reactions as a topic in science. Yet Sarah perceived it as highly related to life
because “these chemical reactions keep our bodies alive,” while Julie found it hard to see
how the chemistry she learned can be applied to the real world. From these comments,
one can see that the extent to which science was perceived as being relevant to everyday
life was not determined by what the science topic was about (e.g., plants or chemical
reactions), rather it was more inﬂuenced by how the participants perceived the topic’s
connection to the world.

Now that we have examined how the participants perceived science as related to
their own life, let us address how they perceived science as helpful or harmful to people
in general. Ten out of the twelve students who were interested in science described
science as something that would help people to solve problems and improve life. In
contrast to that, only ﬁve students in the uninterested group mentioned or implied that
science could help people. Following are two examples from the interested group. The
helpful aspect mentioned by the students in the uninterested group was similar in nature,

as illustrated by the third example.

Interviewer: What do you think people do when they do science?

Simon: A lot of research, looking for new ways to solve
problems...

later on in the interview...

Interviewer: Would you please talk about each of the four areas of
science and give me some examples of your interest in each
area?

Simon: ...I am interested in the genetics and the medical ﬁeld...

Interviewer: Why genetics?

44

Simon: 1 think a lot of problems can be solved by genetics. Certain
genes cause problems. We can ﬁx that.

* * *

Interviewer: Why are you interested in science?

Amelia: I don’t know if you would call it science. I am interested in
medicine and helping people.

Interviewer: So you are interested in helping people by medicine. In
order to do that, science is related?

Amelia: Right.

* III III

Interviewer: What do you think people do when they do science?
Anna: Trying to think of cures or treatments for diseases or
sickness...

More uninterested female students than uninterested male students mentioned
science as helpful to people. Only one male student in the uninterested group mentioned
science as helpful to people. In contrast to that, four female students in the uninterested
group mentioned or implied science as helpful to people. This is consistent with the
notion that females are traditionally more concerned with the social and caring aspects in
their lives (e.g., Gilligan, 1988; Noddings, 1992). The ﬁnding also seems to suggest that
the reason why these girls become uninterested in science does not lie on the issue of

helpfulness or usefulness of science.

R.Q.#1-1.C. Science in Relation to Student Ability

During the interview process, I did not explicitly ask the student to talk about how
good s/he was in science until the very end of the interview. However, some students
spontaneously mentioned information related to how good they were in science when
they talked about their development of interest in science. This seems to suggest that the
issue of competence was important to these students when they thought of their
development of interest in science. One might think that a student’s perception of his/her

ability in science is something about the student, not something about science. However,

45

this information does reveal how a student perceives science in relation to
himself/herself. Imagine one student who perceives science as a subject which s/he is
very good at, and another student who perceives science as a subject which s/he ﬁnds
hard to understand. Science would mean quite different things to these two students. It
would be important to understand this difference because it is likely to be related to the
development of student interest in science.

Interestingly, a distinction could be made between two kinds of information
mentioned by the participants that were relevant to the issue of competence: (1) the
grades or scores they received in science classes or tests, and (2) how good they thought
they were in science. The ﬁndings of this study indicate that grades did not always
correspond to self perception of competence. Students who reported that they always
received good grades in science did not necessarily think of themselves as “good at
science.” In fact, three out of the four students who mentioned that they always received
good grades in science mentioned or implied that they also felt science was often hard to
understand.

Four things can be noticed in the ﬁndings as summarized in Table 3. First, the
three students who reported that they always did well in science classes and/or tests but
found science hard to understand were all in the uninterested group. Second, the one
student who reported that she always did well in science tests and believed she was good
at science was in the interested group. Third, all three students who reported they always
received bad grades in science also reported that they felt science was hard to understand,
and they were all in the uninterested group. Fourth, all three students who felt they were
good at science were all in the interested group; while eight out of the ten students who
mentioned that science was hard to understand were in the uninterested group. The

following examples will further illustrate the four patterns.

46

Table 3

Science in Relation to Student Ability

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gender/ Science was Science was Science was Science was
Interest an area in an area in something the something

which the which the student felt the student
student often student often s/he was good felt hard to
received received bad at. understand.
good grades. grades.

Adam MI x

Charles Ml x

Mark MI x

Richard Ml

Simon Ml

Tom MI

Brice MU

Bert MU x x

Derek MU x x

David MU x x

John MU

Martin MU x x

Amelia Fl

Andrea FI

Linda F I x

Melissa Fl x x

Rebecca P I

Sarah Fl

Anna FU

Angela F U x x

Edna FU x x

Elza FU x

Julie FU x

Theresa FU

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, FI: female interested, F U: female uninterested

Pattern (1): Derek (male, uninterested) reported that he always did well on science
tests, but found science hard to understand. He talked about how this affected his interest
in science. When I asked Derek to draw a curve to represent his development of interest

in science, Derek automatically mentioned that he had a different interest outside of

47

 

school than in school, so he drew two curves. After Derek talked about both curves, he

gave this comment:

Derek: I have always done very well in science. In fact, on my
ACT test, that was my highest score.

Here Derek pointed out that he always did well on science tests. However, he seemed to

often feel frustrated because he was not able to understand science well.

Derek: I feel science - in my experience I wanted to learn more
about science, but it’s kind of like just beyond my grasp. I
tried to understand the things, but I feel that I didn’t have
maybe the help to help me understand. I can’t understand
things on my own, which is very frustrating. I have to be
taught, but a lot of times I am not taught. It’s not that I am
not willing to put the work into it. I am, but I just can’t
ﬁnd the teacher or the mentor to help me learn more about
It.

When Derek was asked about the reasons for being interested or uninterested in science,
he pointed out how the fact that he found it hard to understand science lowered his

interest in science.

Interviewer: It seems that you are pretty interested in science, but also in
general, are you interested in every area of knowledge?

Derek: Yes. There are things I am more interested in than science,
mostly because I don’t understand science in the way it’s
presented to me.

Interviewer: Does that increase your interest or lower your interest?

Derek: That deﬁnitely lowers my interest inside the classroom. I
didn’t feel I was involved. When I leave the classroom, it’s
just frustration! Period! It’s like “Gee, I don’t understand
that. How am I going to get this knowledge? How am I
going to learn this somewhere else?”

One can see that in Derek’s experience, doing well on science classes and tests was not
enough to make him feel interested in science. What was more important to him was
whether he felt he could truly understand science well.

Pattern (2): Melissa (female, interested) was similar to Derek in the aspect of
always doing well in science. Yet they differed in the way they felt about how good they
were at science. Melissa felt that she was good at science. She talked about how this

raised her interest in science.

48

Interviewer: Can you tell me some of your major experiences with
science?

Melissa: I have always done well with science testing and classes...

Later in the interview...

Interviewer: How did your interest in science start?

Melissa: I think it comes from doing well on tests and things like
that when you were younger, with achievement or aptitude
tests, because I gained conﬁdence in it. Once I gained
conﬁdence in it, I chose to take classes regarding that over
other ones. Once I started knowing more about it, it
became more and more interesting to me...

Interviewer: How come more knowledge makes you more interested?

Melissa: I guess it all stems from conﬁdence again. I have felt
secure with it, and I would like to learn more about it...

Pattern (3): Interestingly, both Derek and Melissa did well on science tests.
Melissa mentioned it as the main reason that made her gain conﬁdence in science. Yet
for Derek it was not enough to make him feel that he was good at science. In contrast to
Derek and Melissa, Bert’s (male, uninterested) comments illustrate how bad grades and

the experience that science was hard to understand lowered his interest in science.

Interviewer: Why aren’t you interested in science?

Bert: I don’t know if it’s exactly one experience, or the whole
experience. I think it started in junior high school when we
had to take science courses, especially chemistry. I could
never fully understand everything that was needed or was
what the teacher wanted us to understand. I could never get
it out in my head straight. It’s too frustrating, so it’s like
that “I don’t like this”. ..

Later during the interview, as Bert talked about his curve of development

of interest in science...

Bert: I think junior high really had an impact on my science,
because one year I had a teacher I didn’t like at
all. . .besides that, I would say the grades I would get back
for what I was doing in science also discouraged me from
science, because I have always liked my grades to be high.
Science was always a struggle for me. I wasn’t getting the
grades I wanted, so I wasn’t interested after...

Pattern (4): Adam’s (male, interested) comments and Charles’ (male, interested)
comments illustrate how interested students felt they were good at science, and how that
perceived competence increased their interest in science. Both of them mentioned that

they were good at science, without explicitly mentioning anything related to grades.

Interviewer: How did your interest in science start?

49

Adam:

Interviewer:

Charles:

It started with math. Science became another subject I was
good at...

3'! * 1|!

Can you tell me some of your major experience with
science?

Mostly the reason I like doing it is because I have always
been good at it. It comes easy to me. I can read it over and
understand what they are talking about, instead of reading it
ﬁve or six times and trying to ﬁgure out what’s going on...

David’s (male, uninterested) and Edna’s (female, uninterested) comments illustrate how

the feeling that science was hard for them lowered their interest in science.

Interviewer:
David:

Interviewer:
David:

Interviewer:
David:

Interviewer:
Edna:

Would you please tell me some of your major experiences
with science?

...Last year I took a class Physics 184. I just hated it. . .I
realized that I was really not a science person.

How did you make that judgment?

Just the fact of lack of interest. As the weeks went on, the
interest level decreased.

How did you tell your interest level?

Success wise. If I was doing well enough. ...Some people
can understand right away. Other people have to either
visualize it or draw it out certain ways, but both ways
weren’t for me either, so I learned that way that wasn’t for
me.

III It It

Would you please tell me how you feel about science?
It’s just not interesting because I can’t understand it. I
can’t put it into the context that it was probably meant to
be. I just can’t understand it at all. I can’t understand
anything that deals with it. It’s just real complicated.

From the above mentioned patterns, one can see that receiving good grades or test scores

did not always make someone interested in science. What seemed more important was to

truly feel good at science. The opposite of that feeling (the feeling that science was hard

to understand) was highly associated with lowered interest in science.

In summary, students in the interested group and the uninterested group did not

differ with regard to their understanding of the epistemological nature of science except

that only students in the uninterested group described science as memorization.

50

Nevertheless, more students in the uninterested group mentioned that science was often
experienced in ways that were different from authentic science. In general, students in
the interested group saw science as more related to everyday life and more helpful to
people compared to students in the uninterested group. Only students in the interested
group described science as something they were good at, while more students in the

uninterested group described science as something hard to understand.

R.Q.#1-2. ﬂat did Interest in Science Mean to the Pzﬂicipants?

Having described what science meant to the participants in this study, I will now
address what interest in science meant to them. As discussed in Chapter 2, I
conceptualized individual interest as a person’s dispositional preference toward a
particular domain of activities either for an intrinsic reason (i.e., enjoying the activity
itself) or for a self-detennined instrumental reason (i.e., the activity leads to something
else that is of true value to the individual). One issue I must examine is whether this
conceptualization of interest was consistent with the participants’ experiences and ideas
of interest as they described them. In other words, when they talked about interest in
science, did they mean enjoying doing science, and/or tending to pursue science because
it would help them to acquire something else they valued. The ﬁndings indicate that this
conceptualization was consistent with the participants’ talk of interest. As presented in
Table 4, the component of “enjoying” science was identiﬁed in all the participants’
comments when they talked about interest in science; the component of science “leading
to something else of value” was identiﬁed in eighteen participants’ comments when they
talked about interest in science (2 male interested, 5 male uninterested, 5 female
interested, 6 female uninterested). One example from each of the four groups will be

given to illustrate how the participants talked about “enjoying science” and “choosing to

51

pursue science in order to acquire something of value to them” when they commented on

interest in science.

Table 4

Components in Students’ Talk of Interest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Interest as Interest as
Interest enjoying choosing

to do in
order to
acquire
something
of value

Adam MI x

Charles MI x x

Mark MI x

Richard MI x

Simon MI x x

Tom MI x

Brice MU x x

Bert MU x x

Derek MU x x

David MU x x

John MU x x

Martin MU x

Amelia FI x x

Andrea Fl x x

Linda Fl x x

Melissa F I x x

Rebecca Fl x

Sarah FI x

Anna FU x x

Angela F U x x

Edna F U x x

Elza FU x x

Julie F U x x

Theresa FU x x

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested,
F 1: female interested, F U: female uninterested

52

In the ﬁrst example, Simon (male, interested) talked about how he enjoyed

various science activities.

Interviewer:

Simon:

Would you please think about each of the four areas and
tell me whether you are interested in them?

I enjoy learning facts and concepts in school, but much more I
enjoy taking the information and doing the experiments, and
working with the knowledge, doing the ﬁguring out stuff. I do that
both in and out of school.

Later on in the interview, Simon also talked about how his interest in science was

affected by a friend’s illness and death. That experience raised his interest in a certain

area of science because he wanted to ﬁnd cures for that illness.

Interviewer:

Simon:

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

There is one that made me start thinking about medicine.
My best friend had muscular dystrophy. He became
weaker and weaker and eventually passed away. He was
fourteen. I wish there is something that can be done,
because that is a disease that’s terminal. I thought about
physical therapy. I watched him do physical therapy. It
does slow the process down, but it doesn’t stop it. Then I
thought about medicine. I started reading about genetics.
There is a lot of things that can be corrected by genetics.
That’s probably why I started to think about genetics...

David (male, uninterested) did not have too much interest in science. Yet from the way

he talked about his limited amount of interest in science, we can see that what he meant

by interest contained the component of enjoying science and the component of science

leading to something else of value to him.

Interviewer:
David:

Interviewer:

David:

In general, are you interested in science?

...school science I don’t really enjoy, but I think it’s a
necessity that I know what’s going on in daily life. If you
don’t know what the weather is, you don’t know what to
wear.

Do you avoid doing something because of your lack of
interest in science?

I avoid taking classes. If I don’t have to take a class, I
won’t take it. . .For leisure time, if something involves
science, that seems to be interesting and fun, I am going to
go ahead and do it and see. Maybe I will Ieam something.

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Why are you not interested in science?

53

David:

As I said, science is hard for me. If it is basically
unnecessary, I don’t go into it. If it’s a necessity, I need
science to live my life, I will do it.

When Linda (female, interested) talked about how her interest in science played out in her

life, she used the word “like.” She also mentioned the instrumental aspect of her interest

in science when she pointed out how science could help her get a good job.

Interviewer:

Linda:
Interviewer:
Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:

Would you please tell me how your interest in science
plays out in your daily life?

...I like doing things like going to the zoo, seeing animals.
Why are you interested in science?

...I think it’s a pretty relevant ﬁeld. Not everybody thinks
that, but it is...

Are there other reasons why you are interested in science?
I know there are a lot of jobs in the ﬁeld. I am going to
want to get a good job after school.

When Theresa (female, uninterested) talked about her interest in science, she used the

words “love, fulﬁllment, excite,” which implied the component of enjoying. She also

talked about “important” and “ﬁx the problem,” which implied the component of

“science leading to something else of value.”

Interviewer:
Theresa:

Interviewer:

Theresa:

In general, are you interested in science?

Yes. It’s not something I would really love to go into,
because I just don’t think I would be that successful in it,
but I think it’s deﬁnitely important to study it...

Can you give me a few examples of the kinds of things you
would do because of your interest in science, or would
avoid doing because of your lack of interest in science?
Chemistry. I just don’t like. It doesn’t give me any
fulﬁllment. I guess it’s important to study how atoms
work, but it just doesn’t excite me at all. But like biology
and environmental studies, those are cool, because they are
pertinent to my life, because we have to live in it.

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Theresa:

How does your interest in science play out in your daily
life?

I don’t really have an active role in it. I do a lot of thinking
about it. . .I just think about it. I think about my kids. If I
am going to bring them to this world, it’s going to be
polluted. There is got to be a way to ﬁx it. That’s why I
am interested in science, like the future.

54

The ﬁndings presented in Table 4 and the examples presented above conﬁrmed that the
conceptualization of interest discussed in Chapter 2 was consistent with the participants’
ideas and experiences of interest.

After unpacking what the participants meant by interest, let’s examine what their
interest in science looked like. During the interview, I asked the student: “To what extent
would you say you are interested in science?” I asked each participant to choose a
number between 1 and 5 to indicate his/her level of general interest in science, as well as
his/her interest level for each of the four areas (learning science facts/concepts in school,
learning science facts/concepts outside of school, ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge in
school, ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge outside of school). The number 5 represented
strongly interested, the number 4 represented pretty interested, the number 3 represented
neutral, the number 2 represented not interested, the number 1 represented not interested
at all. Table 5 presents the numbers given by the students.

Three things are worth noting in Table 5. First, most students had different levels
of interest in different areas of science. This ﬁnding indicates that interest in science is
not a uniﬁed construct. Someone can be interested in one aspect of science but not in
another. Second, students in the interested group had smaller variations among the
interest levels across the four areas compared with students in the uninterested group. As
one can see, the students who reported that they were generally interested in science were
pretty much interested in the four different areas of science. Their interest levels in
different areas tended to vary a little, but not too much. Third, in contrast to students in
the interested group, students in the uninterested group almost all showed a low interest
in learning facts and concepts in school, yet they often were interested in some other
areas of science. Their interest levels in the four different areas varied a great deal. All
students in the uninterested group except one gave a number equal to or lower than 2 for

their interest in learning facts and concepts in school. However, all of them except that

55

one gave a number equal to or higher than 4 for at least one area of science when they

considered the other three areas of science.

56

Table 5

Student Interest in Science in General and in the Four Areas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Interest Facts & Facts and Figuring Figuring Variation
Interest in concepts concepts out in out of interest
general in school outside school outside among the
of school of school four areas
Adam MI 4.5 3.5 3 4.5 3.5 0.40
Charles MI 4.5 3 3* 5 4 0.92
Mark MI 3.5 3 4 3 2 0.67
Richard MI 4 4.5 5 3.5 5 0.50
Simon MI 5 3.75 5 5 5 0.39
Tom MI 3.5 3 4 4 3 0.33
Brice MU 3.5 l 3.5 2.5 4 1.75
Bert MU 2.3 2.5 3.5 4 4.5 0.73
Derek MU 4 2 4 2 5 2.25
David MU 1.75 l 5 2.5 4 3.06
John MU 4 2 4 3 4 0.92
Martin MU 3 2.5 5 4 1.5 2.42
Amelia Fl 4 3 5 4.5 4 3.25 0.31
Andrea Fl 4.5 3 4 3 5 0.92
Linda Fl 4.5 3 4 4 4 0.25
Melissa F I 4 4 3 4 3.5 0.23
Rebecca Fl 3.5 4 4 3.5 3 0.23
Sarah F I 4.5 5 3.5 5 3 1.06
Anna FU 2* 2 4 2 4 1.33
Angela FU l l 3 3 5 2.67
Edna FU l 2 4 l 5 3.33
Elza EU 3.5 2 4 3.5 1.5 1.42
Julie FU 3 2 3 4 5 1.67
Theresa F U 3 3 3 3 3 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, Fl: female interested, FU: female uninterested

*: Charles insisted that he did not have enough experience to comment on his interest level in this
area. A number was assigned to him in order to facilitate the statistical process. The number 3 was
chosen because it seemed most appropriate to describe someone who neither had a strong interest nor
a strong disinterest in a particular area.

‘: Anna explicitly expressed that her interest in natural sciences is very different from her interest in
social sciences. Anna gave the number 2 for her interest in natural sciences, and the number 5 for her
interest in social sciences. Since this distinction was not anticipated before the study, and my original
conceptualization of science put more emphasis on natural sciences, the number 2 was used here for
the purpose of statistics.

57

A statistical process was used to further describe these phenomena. First, each
individual variance among the individual’s interest levels in the four areas of science was
calculated (Table 5). This number represents one individual’s variation of interest among
the four areas. Then group means of these variances were compared between the male
interested group and the female interested group, between the male uninterested group
and the female uninterested group, between the male interested group and the male
uninterested group, between the female interested group and the female uninterested
group, and between the combined interested group (containing both the male and the
female interested participants) and the combined uninterested group (containing both the
male and the female uninterested participants), using a series of t tests. These
comparisons would help us see the differences of extents to which individual interests
vary among the four areas of science between various groups. No signiﬁcant difference
was found between the male interested group and the female interested group. Neither
was there a signiﬁcant difference between the male uninterested group and the female
uninterested group. All three comparisons involving a contrast between the interested
group and the uninterested group yielded signiﬁcant results, with an alpha value of 0.01
for the comparison between the male interested group (group mean = 0.53, SD = 0.22)
and the male uninterested group (group mean = 1.85, SD = 0.90), 0.05 for the comparison
between the female interested group (group mean = 0.50, SD = 0.38) and the female
uninterested group (group mean = 1.74, SD = 1.16), and 0.001 for the comparison
between the combined interested group (group mean = 0.52, SD = 0.30) and the
combined uninterested group (group mean = 1.80, SD = 0.99). These statistics further
conﬁrm the patterns discussed in the previous paragraph.

Since many students’ interest levels in various areas of science were different, I
wanted to further understand the reasons for these differences. During the interviews, the

students were asked to talk about the reasons for the different interest levels they gave for

58

different areas of science. The analysis of Table 5 and the reasons given by the students
revealed that the most meaningful interest difference among these areas lies in the
difference between in—school science and outside-of-school science. The reasons given
by the participants to account for this difference could be categorized into three
categories: (1) reasons that had very little to do with science per se (e. g., I often have
other things to do outside of school); (2) reasons related to the learning process and/or
understanding of science (e.g., memorization vs. meaningful understanding), and (3)
reasons related to the student’s motivational and/or emotional preferences (e.g., feeling
pressured to learn science or not). Table 6 summarizes the reasons offered by the
participants to account for the different interest levels between science in school and

science outside of school.

59

Table 6

Reasons for Differences between Interest in School and Interest Outside of School

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Reasons that had Reasons related to Reasons related to the
Interest little to do with learning process/ student’s motivational
science understanding of science /emotional preferences
lack of have memori- experience feel being pressure of
material other zation vs. what forced to failing vs.
outside things to meaning- happens vs. learn vs. learning in
of school do ful under- being told being free a relaxed
outside standing to choose atmosphere
of school what to
learn

Adam MI x x

Charles MI

Mark Ml x x x

Richard Ml x

Simon MI x x x

Tom MI x x

Brice MU x

Bert MU x x

Derek MU x x x x

David MU x x x

John MU x

Martin MU x x

Amelia Fl x

Andrea Fl x x

Linda F I x x

Melissa Fl x

Rebecca Fl

Sarah FI x

Anna FU x x

Angela F U x

Edna FU x x x

Elza F U x x x x

Julie FU x x

Theresa FU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, Fl:

60

female interested, PU: female uninterested

 

From Table 6 one can see that only students in the interested group offered
reasons that had nothing to do with science itself. This, taken together with the ﬁnding
that students in the interested group had a smaller variance among their interest levels
across the four areas, seems to suggest that for students who were generally interested in
science, the slight difference of interest levels in different contexts had less to do with
science itself, but more to do with temporary situational factors. Mark’s (male,

interested) and Sarah’s (female, interested) comments were examples of this kind.

After Mark chose a number between 1 and 5 to indicate his interest level

for each of the four areas of science (area one: 3, area two: 4, area three: 3,

area four: 2)...

Interviewer: Can you talk about the different interest levels for area
three and area four?

Mark: When I am outside of school, I don’t think about science
that much because I do other things.

’1! III *

After Sarah chose a number between 1 and 5 to indicate her interest level

for each of the four areas of science (area one: 5, area two: 3 or 4, area

three: 5, area four: 3)...

Interviewer: Can you talk about the difference of interest level between
In-school and outside-of-school?

Sarah: Because outside of school I like to do things that have
nothing to do with school. I don’t have to think about
school.

In contrast to the students in the interested group, students in the uninterested
group often had reasons to account for their different interest levels for different areas
that were related to the very core of the process of learning and/or understanding of
science. Ten students attributed their interest difference to whether the context required
memorization or supported meaningful understanding. Seven out of these ten students
were in the uninterested group. Brice’s (male, uninterested) and Angela’s (female,
uninterested) comments illustrate the contrast between memorization and meaningful

understanding.

Brice chose the number 1 to indicate his interest level in learning science
facts and concepts in school, the number 3 or 4 to indicate his interest
level in learning science facts and concepts outside of school.

61

Brice:

Interviewer:

Brice:

My interest for area one is relatively low, because a lot of
basic science courses involve memorization. I have never
liked picking up a science book and memorizing facts and
names and different things. . .The interest for area two is 3
or 4, because it presents the facts. There is no
memorization involved. The type of programs makes it
interesting. Science textbooks tend not to be quite
interesting and as entertaining as the programs might be or
magazine articles.

Can you say a little bit more about what characteristics of
those programs or magazine articles make them more
interesting?

The programs and magazine articles show practical things
in everyday happenings. Reading a textbook and learning
the anatomy of a frog is not a very practical thing for
someone unless it’s the ﬁeld of your study. Programs and
things like that present it in a way that is very colorful, very
engaging, a lot more practical. It’s a lot easier to follow.
You don’t have to force yourself to follow it. It’s more
entertaining.

Angela had a higher interest in learning science outside of school (area one: 1, area two:

3, area three: 3, area four: 5). When she explained why, Angela pointed out that the stuff

you learned in the classroom was hard to connect to real life, while ﬁguring out scientiﬁc

knowledge outside of school was “necessary” in everyday life.

Interviewer:

Angela:

Interviewer:
Angela:

Can you talk about the difference between inside and
outside of school?

...Sometimes when we think of science, we tend to think of
school science. It’s the stuff you learn in the classroom.
You don’t really use it. You don’t realize it actually does
go on in real life. It’s very hard to put the two together.
Why is area four interesting to you?

It’s necessary. . .If your car breaks down, you have to ﬁgure
out what’s going on with that. It’s always helpful to know
exactly what’s in the car. What such and such might not be
working. It’s necessary.

Another contrast that emerged from the participants’ comments related to the

learning process/understanding of science was the difference between experiencing what

happens and being told about it. Ten students mentioned that they had a higher interest

when they were able to experience what happened in science instead of merely being told

about it. Again, seven out of these ten students were in the uninterested group.

62

When Derek (male, uninterested) was asked to draw a curve to represent his

development of interest in science, he drew two curves because he had a different interest

outside of school than in school. Derek (male, uninterested) then pointed out how certain

contexts which did not allow hands-on experiences lowered his interest in science.

Derek:

Interviewer:
Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

1 have a different interest outside of school than in school.
...When I was in elementary school and middle school I
was more interested in science. When I got into high
school, I became less interested, especially when we started
getting into biology. Maybe I was less interested in that
because there was less hands-on in biology. They didn’t let
us get into dissecting, because of certain government things
in the public schools. It was more lectures and book work,
just busy work.

Busy work?

Busy work is work sheets, tests, memorization of facts the
whole year long. I suppose it’s part of science, but it
wasn’t the part I was interested in...

How did your early experience differ from your high school
experience to make you interested?

I guess as kids you can’t have so many work sheets,
quizzes, tests. We had the astronomy type thing. They
bring animals to us every year. Things you do as a kid.
Going to the zoo, going to the science museums...

Later on during the interview, Derek mentioned how certain contexts which allowed

experiencing and exploring increased his interest in science.

Interviewer:

Derek:

Is there anything in your life that has affected the
development of your interest in science?

Going to a science museum, exploring on my own. . .My
interest deﬁnitely increased when I began to understand
things. . .When I go to a museum, I started to understand
things. Then I can apply that to things in my life. I say
“You know what? I understand that.” That’s the
knowledge I gained from doing that. That’s why my
interest would go up.

Julie (female, uninterested) was more interested in ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge than

learning science facts and concepts. She also tended to be more interested in science

outside of school than in school. Being able to experience what happens through hands-

on experiences was an important factor to account for her different interest levels in

different contexts.

63

Interviewer:

Julie:

Why do you have higher levels of interest for area three and
four compared to area one and two?

Because this is the hands-on stuff. To me, someone would
learn something more by ﬁxing the car than reading about
how to ﬁx their car. It’s just the way our brain works.
That’s just me.

As far as students’ personal motivational/emotional preferences, twelve students

mentioned that they felt a stronger interest outside of school because they could choose

what they felt interested in learning rather than being forced to learn something within the

conﬁned curriculum. Similar to the pattern of reasons about learning/understanding,

eight out of these twelve students were in the uninterested group. In the following

example, John (male, uninterested, area one: 2, area two: 4, area three: 3, area four: 4)

indicated higher interest levels outside of school than in school. The main reason to

account for this interest difference was that he felt he was an active free learner outside of

school, whereas in school, he was constrained to learning certain things.

Interviewer:

John:

Can you talk about the difference between in school and
outside of school?

...I go to school. I do well in school, but the whole school
concept seems conﬁned. You are going to learn this.
That’s it. There is no time for you to say, “What about
this?” You want to go over it, but you have to follow the
curriculum. It’s just very conﬁning. I don’t enjoy the
school atmosphere very much. Outside of school, I am the
teacher. I am the one who pushes myself to learn, so I am
following a track here. If I ﬁnd something really
interesting, I can split off, then come back to the original
idea. It’s almost relaxing. One I look at as doing work,
doing a job to ﬁgure this out. You have to do it. Otherwise
you don’t get a grade, you don’t pass a class, you get hurt
later on in your life. One is enjoyment. You can do it
without thinking of it as a job. You can do it on a vacation,
and it wouldn’t matter. I always think you get more out of
the one you do for fun, the one outside of school.

Edna (female, uninterested, area one: 2, area two: 4, area three: 1, area four: 5) also talked

about how she felt pressured to learn in school, and free to learn outside of school.

Interviewer:
Edna:

Why do you have a higher interest outside of school?
Maybe because when I am out of school, nobody is really
pressuring me to do it. It’s not about a grade. It’s just
about me learning to understand and to ﬁgure out why

64

things happen. It’s like not a professor saying “Remember
this. It’s so important. Know these graphs. Know these
charts. Know this formula.” I think it’s just easier for me
if I am learning about it on my own, rather than somebody
telling me exactly what I should study, because some
classes don’t cover everything you want to know about.

Four students mentioned how pressure of failing in school lowered their interest
in school. Again, three out of the four were in the uninterested group. In the following
example, Derek (male, uninterested, area one: 2, area two: 4, area three; 2, area four: 5)
deﬁnitely had higher interest levels outside of school. The pressure of failing played a

role.

Interviewer: Why is area four more interesting?

Derek: It’s more interesting because I know I can do it. I don’t feel
that I failed if I don’t ﬁgure something out. I also
accomplish more this way, trying to learn how things work
and trying to ﬁx things.

Anna (female, uninterested, area one: 2, area two: 4, area three: 2, area four: 4), similar to
John and Edna, also pointed out that she had more freedom to choose what to learn
outside of school. In addition to that, Anna also mentioned the pressure of “feeling

dumb” in school.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the difference between inside school
and outside of school?

Anna: Inside school, you have to do a certain thing. You have to
watch a ﬁlm strip when everyone else is watching. When
you have to question about things, that makes you kind of
dumb. . .Outside of school, you can learn. If you see a TV
show about something you are interested in, you can watch
a whole hour on just that.

In summary, the ﬁndings revealed that most students had different levels of
interest in different areas of science. Students in the interested group had smaller
variations among the interest levels across the four areas compared with students in the
uninterested group. Reasons to account for the different interest levels fell into three
categories: (1) reasons that had little to do with science, (2) reasons related to the learning

process/understanding of science, and (3) reasons related to the student’s

65

motivational/emotional preferences. Only students in the interested group offered
reasons that had nothing to do with science itself. Students in the uninterested group
often had reasons that were related to the very core of the process of learning and/or
understanding of science as well as their motivational/emotional preferences. Contexts
that facilitate meaningful understanding (rather than memorization), hands-on
experiences (rather than merely being told), free choice (rather than being forced to learn

certain topics), and relief from evaluation pressure tend to raise student interest.

Interpersonal Relationships and Interest in Science (R.Q.#2)

The second research question examines whether college students who are
interested in science attribute their interest to interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential
ﬁgures who were also interested in science and with whom they had a good relationship.
My hypothesized answer was yes. The answer to this research question was also yes, at
least for the majority of the participants. All 12 participants who were interested in
science mentioned interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures. The inﬂuential ﬁgures mentioned
were science teachers (by 10 students), parents or grandparents (by 4 students), and
siblings (by 2 students). Nine out of the 12 students (4 males, 5 females) mentioned
interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures as portrayed in the research question. The other three
students mentioned interest-raising relationships or interactions which were different
from what was portrayed in the research question. One male student mentioned interest-
lowing experiences which involved some inﬂuential ﬁgures. Table 7 summarizes the
characteristics of the interest-raising inﬂuential relationships mentioned by the

participants in the interested group.

66

 

Table 7

Characteristics of Interest-raising Relationships Mentioned by
Participants in the Interested Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Inﬂuential Inter- Practiced had a Demon- had a did not
Interest ﬁgure ested/ in a scien- strated good have too
curious science tist’s science relation- much
/excited related habit can be ship with relation-
about ﬁeld of useful/ student ship with
science mind related student
to life
Adam MI Father x x
Grandfather x x
Sci T x x
Charles MI HS Physics T x x
Sister x x x
Mark MI College Prof x x x x
Richard MI Father x
Simon MI HS biology T x x
Tom Ml Father x x
MS & HS T x x
Amelia Fl HS biology T x x
Mother x x
Andrea F I HS genetics T x x x
Linda Fl HS biology T x x x
Melissa Fl Surgeon x x x
Rebecca F I ES Sci T x
Brother x
Sarah Fl MS Sci T x
HS Sci T X

 

Ml: male interested, MU: male uninterested, F 1: female interested, F U: female uninterested
HS: High School, MS: Middle School, ES: Elementary School, Sci: Science,
T: Teacher(s), Prof: Professor

The interest-raising experiences the nine participants had with their inﬂuential

ﬁgures often contained two components. First, the inﬂuential ﬁgures were often

described by the students as “being interested in science” or as “a practitioner in a

science-related ﬁeld.” Second, the inﬂuential ﬁgures and the students often had a good

relationship with each other. The following examples illustrate the two common

67

 

components that characterized the experiences described by the participants who were

interested in science.

R.Q.#2-l. Interest-raising Experiences with Inﬂuential Figures Who Were Interested
in Science and/or Practiced in a Science-related Field

Charles (male, interested) described how his interest in science was raised because
of his sister, who always liked science and talked to him about science. That made
Charles want to go into a similar ﬁeld. Charles perceived his relationship with his sister
as supportive and caring, and thought that the relationship changed science from

“something other people do” to “something someone close to me can do.”

Interviewer: Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

Charles: My sister. She always likes science. She’s got a major in
biology from the University of Michigan. She’s three and a
half years older than me. . .It inﬂuenced me. Because she’s
always interested in it, I became exposed to it, and became
interested in it. When she went to college. . .she took a
couple of classes about trees and learned to identify them
without leaves, and to understand what happens to them
during the winter. She talked to me about it. I thought it
was interesting.

Interviewer: Can you tell me a little more about the change of your
interest in science as a result of interacting with your sister?
What did your interest in science look like before that
experience? What did your interest in science look like
after that experience?

Charles: I was probably interested in science before, but not to that
extent. I didn’t know whether I wanted to go into science
or into business until I saw the stuff she was doing and how
I was interested in the same thing. I wanted to go into a
similar ﬁeld.

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer: How would you describe your relationship with your sister?

Charles: Good. When we were young we fought all the time. When
she went to college, we started to get along. She’s
supportive of me. She cares about me. She gets down on
me if I am not doing what I am supposed to do.

Interviewer: Do you think that your relationship with your sister has
anything to do with your interest in science?

Charles: Probably, because before science was always something
other people did. When I saw her doing, she’s someone
close to me.

68

When Adam (male, interested) talked about the teachers who increased his interest in
science, he stressed how well they helped students to understand science. He also
emphasized the personal aspect of his relationships with teachers, which were

characterized by mutual understanding and caring.

Interviewer: Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

Adam: Deﬁnitely my dad, also my mom’s father. . .and my
teachers. I had a pretty good teacher in the 6th, 7th, and 8th
grades. A science teacher. He’s real good with the kids,
real helpful as far as getting the understanding between the
science and the students. In high school I had a couple of
good science teachers.

Interviewer: What did they do?

Adam: What interested me the most was hands-on kind of things.
Not just doing it to get it done, but they helped you to
understand what was going on, what the experiment was
about. That’s mostly what they did.

Interviewer: Can you tell me a little bit more about your interactions and
relationships with your teachers?

Adam: In middle school, it was a private and small school. They
could be real personal to students. They could be a friend
as well as a teacher.

Interviewer: Personal?

Adam: You knew about each other. You knew how each person
felt, what their true feelings were about. They were not just
teaching for their paychecks.

Interviewer: It seemed that they cared about students?

Adam: Exactly.

Interviewer: Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
relationships with your teachers?

Adam: Friendly, helpful, personal.

Similar to Adam, Linda (female, interested) also mentioned a science teacher who raised
her interest. Parallel to Adam’s comment about how well his teachers helped students to
understand science, Linda mentioned how this teacher made science “relevant to her
everyday life.” Parallel to Adam’s emphasis on the personal aspect of relationship, Linda
stressed that the teacher was nice, patient, personal, and went out of his way to help
students understand everything, and how her experience with this teacher made her “like

biology a lot.”

Interviewer: Would you please tell me some of your major experiences
with science?

69

Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:

Interviewer:

Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:
Interviewer:

Linda:

My freshman year in high school, I had biology, and that
was such a great class. I had a great teacher. That’s
probably why I am so interested in that now. We had
dissections. I had never done it before.

What is it about that class that made it so special for you?
Probably because it seemed so relevant to my everyday life
- more than I ﬁnd in physics and chemistry. Those could
be pretty confusing. I had a great teacher. He was really
nice, really patient. He actually went here for graduate
school. We had a lot of opportunities to have our questions
answered if we were confused.

What was it about the teacher that made him a great
teacher?

He was just a really nice guy. He was really easy to talk to.
If you had any questions, you could always ask him. He
never yelled at us once. He held review sessions. He went
out of his way to make sure we understood everything.
Went out of his way?

Like the review sessions. We had some for the ﬁnal. We
had reviews at eight o’clock in the morning. I am sure he
had better things to do that day.

Can you tell me a little more about the change of your
interest in science as a result of interacting with that
person?

I think I was interested in learning about biology before I
got into that class. . .After that class, I liked biology a lot. I
wanted to take another class.

Am I understanding it right that you had some interest in
biology before you took that course, and you became more
interested after the course?

Yeah.

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Linda:
Interviewer:
Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

My teacher from that biology class.

What did he do?

He took time with the students. I think with some people, I
know at least with me, it was a more personal level. I still
see him now. He was like, “Come back and visit me. Tell
me how you like State.” Just like a really nice easy-going
guy, he deﬁnitely knew what he was talking about.

How would you describe your interaction with this teacher?
When he lectured, usually he kept our interest. He always
asked if we had questions. If we were working in a lab, we
could just call him over for him to help.

How did he keep you interested?

He didn’t have a monotone voice which puts me right to
sleep. I don’t know what it was. I wish he could teach
other people how to do it. He had different overheads. We
did watch some movies sometimes. I can’t think of
anything else right now.

70

Interviewer:

Linda:

Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
relationship with this teacher?
Supportive, helpful, easy-going.

Andrea (female, interested) described how her science teacher helped her experience

science through various hands-on experiences, and how that got her to “think a lot more”

about issues related to science.

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Would you please tell me some of your major experiences
with science?

My genetics class. We bred those fruit ﬂies. We counted
them all, made all those diagrams...

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

Probably that one genetics class I took. It got me to think a
lot about how genetics affects people, animals, and
plants... We also talked about extinction. That one class
got me thinking a lot more about how things actually work.
That was in junior high school.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the characteristics of
that class that made you interested?

I really liked the teacher. I had him for another class that
was environment. I took that class the same time, the same
year. In that class we took a wilderness trip. We took a
ﬁve-day trip. I really liked that teacher. Just doing the fruit
ﬂy experiment. They were like my babies. I had them for
the whole semester. I was so sad when they died. I guess it
was just having my own experiment and learning about it,
seeing it actually happen. They reproduced so fast. You
could actually see the babies and what they looked like. I
had one experiment that failed. They all died the ﬁrst time
I tried it. It was good though. I just liked the whole
process.

With regard to her relationship with the teacher, Andrea stressed the personal aspect of it.

She also mentioned various ways the teacher showed his care toward her learning through

actions such as asking her about the experiments, reassuring her when she was frustrated,

and being open to her suggestions.

Interviewer:
Andrea:

Interviewer:

Can you tell me more about this teacher?

He was younger. He was enthusiastic. He was really
interested in what we were doing, in our success and failure
with fruit ﬂies...

How did you sense that he was interested in your
experiment?

71

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Andrea:

He just always asked us about them. He helped us with
them. If we were frustrated, he reassured us. He would
listen to you, respond to you. He was interested in
everyone’s project.

How would you describe your interaction with this teacher?
Good. A lot of interactions in the classroom with
everybody. He would walk around the room, stop at our
tables, and look at our experiments and help us, point out
things. He was always walking around. He wasn’t just
sitting at one spot. He was always coming to us. He had
an ofﬁce where we could go.

How would you describe your relationship with this
teacher?

Really good and personal, because we went on the
wilderness trip. He was with us, twenty students with him
and another teacher for ﬁve days. We brought all the food
for ﬁve days. We didn’t see any other civilization. We ran
canoes. That got to be pretty personal. We were addressing
him on a ﬁrst name basis. We were like friends. We were
all out in nature. After that trip it was more casual, because
we had spent a lot of time together...

Andrea also explained that one reason for her to become more interested in science
through this relationship was that this teacher was excited about science and that was

contagious and made her want to learn more too.

Interviewer: Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
relationship with the teacher?

Andrea: Exciting. He always has some crazy stories to tell you. . .He
knew how to relate to kids really well. He would talk to us
just like we talk to one another,...He was also really open to
new ideas and suggestions, like one day it’s really nice
outside, “Can we go outside?” “Sure,” he was open to kids’
suggestions.

Interviewer: Were those crazy stories related to science?

Andrea: Yes.

Interviewer: Do you think your relationship with this teacher has
anything to do with your interest in science?

Andrea: Yes. He made the genetics class interesting. It could have

been really boring, just reading a book. He was so excited
about science and learning stuff. It was contagious. It
made you want to learn stuff too.

72

R.Q.#2-2. Interest-raising Experiences with Inﬂuential Figures Who Had a
Scientist’s Habit of Mind

Although the pattern revealed in the ﬁndings about students in the interested
group was consistent with the prediction from the guiding hypothesis, not every single
student’s experience ﬁt this pattern. Three students in the interested group had their own
developmental proﬁle which was different from the hypothesis. One male student
reported an inﬂuential ﬁgure who might not have been particularly interested in science,
but had a habit of mind which was similar to that of a scientist. After Richard (male,
interested) and I had ﬁnished all the questions on the interview protocol, he somehow
started talking about his father. He described how his father’s questioning attitude

affected his own thinking, so it developed toward being more like a scientist’s thinking.

Richard: I think another reason why I see my life as being so highly
believing in science is because when I was a kid I used to
say things that I heard, like “Dad, I heard that this and this
happened.” My dad would say, “How do you know that
happened for sure?” He would just ask me that question. I
would say, “That’s what somebody said.” He would say,
“How do you know if that person was true with you? How
do you know what you read is true? You can’t believe
everything you read or you hear or you see.” ...I think
because of him saying that to me, it more and more made
me progress toward being a little bit more concise in stating
the things I believe and the things I actually take to be true.

Richard then described how the experience with his father affected his interest in science.
Although his father’s questioning attitude had frustrated him for several years, it seemed
to also have helped him to mature in his scientiﬁc thinking, which I know constitutes an
important part of his current life from his other comments such as “My girl friend tells
me that I treat everything in my life like a scientiﬁc project.” “A lot of time I am just

very inquisitive. I will try things and see what happens.”

Interviewer: Do you think that has anything to do with your interest in
science?

Richard: I deﬁnitely think that it does. My father telling me that you
don’t know it’s necessarily true, as a kid it burned me up
inside. I wanted to pull the string and say, “See? Daddy,
it’s just here.” He would give me the same answer. Then I

73

Interviewer:

Richard:

Interviewer:

Richard:

Interviewer:

Richard:

went through a period that I didn’t share anything with my
father. I got tired of him saying that to me. Then I came to
a point that I got some evidence to back up and support
what I was telling him, claiming. It seemed that he would
believe me a little bit more. It was when I was 15 or 16.
From 6 to 12 was more like I was telling him things, and
him saying “It’s not true.”

Is your father interested in science?

I know him, but I don’t know his interests that well. But
when we watch a nature documentary, the man in the
nature documentary would say, “The female lion felt guilty
for leaving her cubs there.” My father would say, “The lion
cubs’ mother doesn’t feel guilty. She doesn’t have
feelings.” My father is a very reasonable man. He looks
into a lot of things. I think my father’s life is very oriented
to the way science is. He really doesn’t believe anything
until he sees it in front of him. He can grasp the idea that is
actually happening, but as for his interest in science, I am
not sure whether he has any.

How would you describe your relationship with your
father?

Very informal. The conversation, when we have one is
very one-sided now when I am older. There are very few
things we talk about. It is either about my ﬁnancial
situation, how I am doing in school, and hockey.

How about when you were growing up?

I have two brothers and one sister. My father seems to be
closer to my sister and my brothers than to me. I think it’s
because I have a lot of disconcerting points of view my
father doesn’t necessarily share. We have ideals and beliefs
that differ. We argue about them. My father and I are
close but it is a strange closeness. I stay close to him just
because he’s my father.

Here one can see that although Richard was not sure whether his father was particularly

interested in science, he believed that his father had an impact on his interest in science.

Richard’s father asked him questions that pushed him to re-examine the evidence he had

and the thinking process he went through for his claims. This seems to have installed the

scientist’s habit of mind into his way of thinking, and thus he became “highly believing

in science.”

74

 

R.Q.#2-3. Interest-raising Experience with Inﬂuential Figures with Whom the
Student Did Not Have Too Much Personal Relationslip

A male student said that a professor was inﬂuential in promoting his interest in
science. However, it was mainly because his lectures helped the student to see how
science could be applied to daily life. There was not too much interpersonal relationship

involved.

Interviewer: Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

Mark: The college professors I have right now.

Interviewer: A particular one?

Mark: My psychology professor right now. He makes everything
easier to learn. He uses a lot of examples that apply to my
daily life.

Interviewer: Can you give me an example?

Mark: He just talked about the effects of alcohol the other day. It

just relates to me because my friends really like alcohol. It
makes me think about it all the time. He was talking about
the scientiﬁc effects of alcohol on motor skills.
Interviewer: How would you describe your interaction with your
psychology professor?
Mark: I don’t know him that well. I only talked to him once or
twice.

A female student mentioned someone inﬂuential in her development of interest in
science. This person demonstrated how science could help people in ways that were
amazing to the student. Although there was not too much interaction and relationship
between that inﬂuential ﬁgure and this student, the experience raised her interest in

science with a very strong and long-lasting effect.

Interviewer: Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

Melissa: When I was younger, around seventh grade. . .I was playing
the soccer game, and broke my arm. I had to go to a
surgeon. I thought it was just so amazing that he made a
little out in my arm, put on something, and I just thought
that was so amazing... Before I broke my arm, I always
wanted to be a teacher. It’s like every child wants to be a
teacher, since it’s a big role model. After I was in so much
pain for my arm and he ﬁxed it, it wasn’t even as bad as it
was supposed to be, I was like, “Wow! This is pretty
amazing stuff.” Then I just wanted to learn about that.

75

Interviewer:

Melissa:

Before that would you say that you were interested in
science, but in a different way, or you were not that
interested in science?

I was only interested in ...like the nature. It’s just like a
child’s thing.

Later on in the interview,

Interviewer:

Melissa:
Intervrewer:
Melissa:

Interviewer:

Melissa:

Interviewer:
Melissa:
Interviewer:
Melissa:
Interviewer:

Melissa:

Interviewer:
Melissa:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

That surgeon.

How would you describe your interaction with him?

He was really successful. It was like the American dream,
get tons of money and stuff like that, but it wasn’t totally
that. The other thing was that he was totally outgoing,
really nice, comforting even when I was in so much pain. I
just thought it was amazing how I just went in surgery four
hours after breaking my arm, and it was completely ﬁxed
when I woke up.

Did you have opportunities to interact with him a little
more?

Yes. Afterwards, I had to go to therapy for about a month.
Coming to the ofﬁce, I saw other things he had done, like
repairing hips and stuff like that.

Interaction?

No. It’s very limited.

And there is no real relationship?

No. It’s not like that at all.

In terms of affecting your interest in science, how
important is this event?

Probably very. After that, it was all I wanted to be when I
was older.

Does it have a pretty long-lasting effect?

Yes, I will have to say.

In summary, all twelve participants in the interested group mentioned interest-

raising experiences in which one can easily identify at least one heavily involved
inﬂuential ﬁgure. Nine participants’ experiences with their inﬂuential ﬁgures were
consistent with the prediction from the guiding hypothesis. The other three had
relationships or interactions with the inﬂuential ﬁgures which were different from the

hypothesis’ prediction.

Interpersonal Relationships and Lack of Interest in Science (R.Q.#3)

Research question #3 examines whether college students who are uninterested in

science perceive a lack of interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were

76

interested in science and with whom they had a good relationship. My hypothesized
answer was yes. However, the ﬁndings were not so straightforward. Five (3 male, 2
female) out of the 12 students who were uninterested in science ﬁt this prediction of the
hypothesis perfectly. These ﬁve students did not mention any interest-raising interactions
with others who were interested in science. Yet the whole picture revealed by the
students’ experiences in the uninterested group was more complicated than what was
suggested in the hypothesis. The other seven students (3 male, 4 female) in the
uninterested group all reported interest-raising experiences that were very similar to the
experiences reported by the students in the interested group. Four students (1 male and 3
female) described interest-raising experiences with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested
in science and with whom the student had a good relationship. Three students (2 male
and 1 female) described interest-raising experiences with one inﬂuential ﬁgure who was
not particularly interested in science, but had a habit of mind which was similar to that of
a scientist. Three students (1 male, 2 female) mentioned interest-lowering experiences
accompanied by a negative relationship with inﬂuential ﬁgures who practiced in a
science-related ﬁeld. The results suggest that it was not that the students in the
uninterested group completely lacked interest-raising experience in their life; it was rather
possible that their interest-lowering experiences outweighed their interest-raising
experiences. Table 8 summarizes characteristics of the interest-raising relationships

mentioned by the participants in the uninterested group.

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Table 8

Characteristics of Interest-raising Relationships Mentioned by
Participants in the Uninterested Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Inﬂuential ﬁgure Interested/ Practiced Had a Demon- Had a
Interest curious/ in a scientist’s strated good
excited science habit of science relation-
about related mind can be ship
science ﬁeld useful/ with
related to student
life
Brice MU
Bert MU
Derek MU Mother x x x
David MU
John MU Father x x
Martin MU Sci T x x
Anna F U Brother x x x x
Angela FU
Edna FU Cousin x x x x
HS astronomy T x x x
Elza FU HS physics T x x
Julie FU Mother x
Theresa FU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, Fl: female interested, FU: female uninterested
HS: High School, Sci: Science, T: Teacher(s)

with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested in science and/or practice in a science-related

In the following sections, I will ﬁrst give examples of interest-raising experiences

ﬁeld. Then I will give examples of interest-raising experiences with inﬂuential ﬁgures

who were not particularly interested in science, but had a scientist’s habit of mind. Then

I will give examples of interest-lowering experiences accompanied by a negative

relationship with inﬂuential ﬁgures who practiced in a science-related ﬁeld.

78

 

R.Q.#3-1. Interest-raising Experiences with Inﬂuential Figures Who Were Interested
in Science and/or Practiced in a Science-related Field

Before discussing the interest-raising experiences with inﬂuential ﬁgures
mentioned by the participants in the uninterested group, it is important to note that the
participants in this group often appeared quite interested in science or in a certain area of
science when they talked about their interest-raising experiences. They were coded in the
uninterested group because that it was the way they identiﬁed themselves when they
signed up for the study. From Table 5, we have already seen that although they belonged
to the uninterested group and tended to have a low interest for learning science
facts/concepts in school, their interest in science was not non-existent. In their comments
about the interest-raising experiences with inﬂuential ﬁgures, we will see how these
experiences were related to their existing interest in science.

Martin (male, uninterested) talked about how his “upbeat” science teachers made

him more interested in science by “bringing life to the class and putting energy into it.”

Interviewer: Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

Martin: My religion...

Interviewer: Anything else?

Martin: Maybe the teachers I had.

Interviewer: Particular ones that you think are inﬂuential?

Martin: Yes, the teachers who had a more upbeat atmosphere.
Interviewer: Upbeat?

Martin: They wouldn’t just get up and drag. They were like, “Bring

a bottle tomorrow.” Then “Today we are going to mix ...”
You know people who actually brought life to their class,
put energy into it.

Interviewer: What exactly did they do to bring life or to put energy?

Martin: They made more class participation things that weren’t
graded, so you could get a feel for the subject, instead of
getting tense like, “I have to do this. I have to do that right.
My grades depend on this.”

Later on, Martin explained how these teachers let him participate in science without
feeling the pressure, and how that helped him understand science was not a “set thing,”
and there could be “variations” in science. This seemed to have piqued his interest in

science.

79

Interviewer:

Martin:

Interviewer:
Martin:

Interviewer:
Martin:
Interviewer:

Martin:

Interviewer:
Martin:

Can you tell me a little more about the change of your
interest in science as a result of experiencing those
teachers? What did your interest in science look like before
that experience? What did your interest in science look like
after that experience?

Before I had those teachers, science seemed to deal with a
set thing, almost like a math problem. There are certain
procedures you follow. Those teachers showed that there
are variations. They kind of simpliﬁed some of the
concepts, and showed that it’s not just one set thing. It’s a
broad spectrum of things you can do.

What does it mean to be set? What are the variations?

For example, some people might discuss electrons, protons,
and neutrons, the nucleus in atoms, etc. They never do
anything for you to see the protons and neutrons in action.
For the better teachers, they actually showed you something
or let you participate in something, and they didn’t grade it.
It was just to pique your interest. They relieved pressure.
When did you have the three good teachers?

Mainly in high school, I had two of them in high school.
How would you describe your interaction with your
teachers?

It was a good interaction. They were very humorous,
which I like. They had a light-hearted atmosphere, so it
didn’t feel like that you were just sitting there for them to
lecture you. They let more of their personality shine
through, but not too much to overshadow what they were
doing.

Letting personality to shine through?

Like they let a girl touch the ball. They were like, “Okay,
now her hair is about ...” They took a big ruler just so you
could see how high it went up. I mean it’s just something
that they brought their own aspects to the experiment.

They didn’t just do it. Or like, “He has a good one,” and
showed kids that.

About his relationships with his teachers, Martin emphasized how the teachers were

“open” to the students, interested in what the students were interested in, and responded

to the students’ desire of wanting to know in helpful ways even if what they wanted to

know was not in the planed curriculum. These relationships, Martin thought, deﬁnitely

made a difference to his interest in science.

Interviewer:

Martin:
Interviewer:

How would you describe your relationships with these
teachers?

It was a good relationship.

Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
relationships with your teachers?

80

Martin:

Interviewer:

Martin:

It wasn’t totally like I was a teacher’s pet, or it was just me.
They were open to the whole class. They were open for
sometimes even a discussion, something they didn’t plan
on discussing in class. They liked to hear our points of
interest, like what we wanted to know about. Like he
mentioned electrons. Somebody wanted to know why is it
that when I walked on the carpet. . .they would discuss it
even though it’s not part of the actual class.

Do you think your relationships with these teachers made a
difference to your interest in science?

Deﬁnitely. If I hadn’t had those kinds of teachers, and if
the things that I remembered really stood out as something
that made me enjoy science class hadn’t been there, I would
have probably just took it as just another science class, just
another set of things and materials to memorize.

For Edna (female, uninterested), her interest in science was highly inﬂuenced by

her cousin, who was always interested in science and was studying in a science-related

ﬁeld. The cousin often shared his enthusiasm and knowledge about science with Edna in

an atmosphere that made Edna “just want to know.”

Interviewer:

Edna:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

My cousin. He goes to U of M. He is studying to be a
psychologist and he wants to be a psychiatrist too. He had
a telescope. We were just looking at the moon. He pointed
out the stars. This was the ﬁrst time I ever knew that there
were volcanoes on the moon. There was something he was
telling me. It was really fascinating to ﬁnd out about the
twin two moons, and it had ice chunks in it, the temperature
and stuff. He was really smart when he came down to that.
He was telling me about it when we were looking. It was
just interesting, because it wasn’t going to be on a test. It
was just something that I just wanted to know. He was
like, “This is why this is like this.” When my grandmother
passed away, my ﬁrst grandmother, he was telling me what
had happened. . .and how cancer just eats through your
body, until none was left, how your ﬁghters inside your
body just couldn’t ﬁght any more. That stuff was really
interesting. He just broke it down to dummy terms. It was
easy for me to understand, because when he talks to his
friends about it, I don’t understand what they are saying,
but when he broke it down for me term after term, I knew
exactly what he was talking about. I can understand it a lot
better than I did when I was in school. He’s constantly
watching all kinds of television - talking about plants and
animals, what they do. He watches all that. When I have
science class, I ask him to tutor me.

81

Edna further contrasted how she used to hate science in class, and how her cousin’s

enthusiasm and style of sharing, questioning, and showing raised her interest in scientiﬁc

issues that he was talking about.

Interviewer:

Edna:

Interviewer:

Edna:

Interviewer:

Edna:

Can you tell me a little more about the change of your
interest in science as a result of interacting with your
cousin? What did your interest in science look like before
that experience? What did your interest in science look like
after that experience?

Before he told me, I just hated it. Every time he would
come over, it would be something new that had happened.
He would read the paper, and say, “Can you believe it?” I
would be like, “What are you talking about?” He was like,
“Don’t you know such and such? This does this, and that’s
why this happened.” When it started getting warm, he
called me to tell me something’s happening, why we are
receiving warmer weather. He said, “The temperature of
the water is rising. It can cause ﬂoods.” Since he told me,
I now know that. I am still interested when he tells me
about it. I want to know more opposed to when I am in
class. I am sitting there for hours trying to keep my eyes
open.

How would you describe your interaction with your
cousin?

He inﬂuenced me.

How?

Just showing me. It was more just we would read. He’s
like, “We will read, then I will let you see exactly what I
am talking about.” Instead of saying like teachers do, “Just
read this chapter, and we will talk about it tomorrow,” he
would be like, “We can read this, and then when we go out,
I will show you exactly what they are talking about.” He
gets National Geographic. He would be like, “Read this
article. Read this article. I am going outside. I will show
you.” Like he had done some experiments about some
water, or something. . .He was like, “Okay, you see this
water.” We went down to the Detroit River. He was like,
“Put your hand in here. Now feel this.” You know, just
crazy stuff. He was like, “Right now there are so many
little things in your hand. You just don’t know.” We took
some water home. He put it under his microscope. He
took samples. We looked at it. It was just like interaction.
You can touch. You can feel. You can read. You can
understand it better.

Edna described her cousin as helpful, sweet, caring, and understanding. She then talked

about how he had always helped her in science as well as in other issues in her life, and

82

how much she would like to be of help to him. Edna also made the assertion that the

relationship with her cousin raised her interest in science.

Interviewer: How would you describe your relationship with your
cousin?

Edna: He is my best friend. He helped me do science.

Interviewer: Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
relationship with him?

Edna: He’s helpful, sweet, caring, understanding. He’s smart,
(Edna started crying) and I love him.

Interviewer: Why are you so touched?

Edna: Because he would help me when nobody else would help
him... When I had nobody to talk to, I could talk to him.
He helped me out. He showed me ...I don’t know. We are
like buddies. Like a lab, or anything he can help me out.
He would set his time out to help me out.

Interviewer: Do you see him often?

Edna: I try to see him as often as I can. Because he is at U of M,
he’s always studying. I try to talk to him. He’s like having
problems now. It really hurts me that I can’t be there to
help him, because he helped me so much.

Interviewer: Were you always close when you were little?

Edna: Since he was born.

Interviewer: Do you think your relationship with your cousin affects
your interest in science?

Edna: Yes, because he just makes it interesting. He would just
show me step by step. He would show me this is how. He
would explain it and explain it until I understood. Other
people just don’t have time for it.

R.Q.#3-2. Interest-raising Experiences with Inﬂuential Figures Who Were
Not Particularly Interested in Science. But Had a Scientist’s Habit
of Mind

With the same reason mentioned in the previous section (R.Q.#3-l), the examples
given by the participants in the uninterested group discussed in this section are also
indistinguishable from those given by the participants in the interested group. They are
about interest-raising experiences with a certain kind of inﬂuential ﬁgures related to their
existing interest in science.

Similar to Richard’s (male, interested) father, John’s (male, uninterested) father
did not seem to be particularly interested in science. Yet he pushed John to question

everything he believed, and to strive for deeper understanding by asking “why.”

83

Interviewer:

John:

Interviewer:
John:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

My father. I used to be kind of like. ..someone told me
something. It’s a fact. It’s true. This table, is the most
solid thing in the world, as solid as a rock. Nothing can get
through it. I guess he took Socrates. . .He taught me to
question everything, like the table is not as hard as
everyone thinks it is. There is a lot of space in it. He
brings out little facts and information. If you take out all
the space between protons and all that, and bring that all
together, all the marker can ﬁt into the head of a pin. It’s
just amazing there is that much space in things that seem to
be so hard.

It seems that your father tends to . ..

He pushed me like, “Why?” Like this paper ...(John was
bending the paper in a certain way.) why doesn’t it break
when you do that?

John talked about how his father’s attitude became his attitude, and how this

“questioning” attitude related to his interest in science.

Interviewer:
John:

Interviewer:
John:

Interviewer:
John:

Interviewer:
John:

Interviewer:

John:

So he was doing that throughout your life?

It rubbed off. He does it quite a bit, and I have picked up
on the trait by watching him.

Why is that making you more interested in science?
Because it doesn’t let me slide. I have to always ﬁgure out
for myself. It’s kind of hard once in a while.

Anything else?

He has always taught me not to accept things as you see
them on the surface. . .If you want to understand them, you
have to look at them extremely close. You get to the point
where it’s almost a part of you to really understand it, then
you get by.

Can you give me an example?

You see things the way they are, like this is a pen. What
makes this pen? How does it work? Basically it’s a simple
thing. Ink in the ball. Ink can spread out when you turn the
ball. But human behavior, that’s one of the main things I
want to study. That’s part of psychology. I have a class in
psychology also. In reactions of people you can see them.
You see them sad, and in order to understand why they are
sad, you really need to know what happened. You have to
be able to relate to them. If you cannot relate to them, you
can’t understand what’s going on in their life. There is no
way you are going to be able to help them.

What do you mean by relate to them?

Understand their problems.

84

With regard to his relationship with his father, John described how his father focused on

kids and family, how he took him to places that enriched his experiences with nature, and

how he shaped his character as a person.

Interviewer:

John:

Interviewer:

John:

Interviewer:

John:

Interviewer:

John:

How would you describe your interaction with your father?
High. There is a lot, always doing stuff. He’s got a very
busy job. It’s been stress, stress, stress, but when he comes
home, everything gets left behind. He focuses on kids and
family. He’s really good at that.

Can you tell me some examples of things you do with him?
We used to go on the ocean, to the volcano. He showed us
all these cool things. We were taken to the middle of the
forest to these pools of warm water. I was shocked. That’s
the way I learned about hot springs. He took us to this cave
underground. It was completely dark. It’s amazing. It’s
just cool like that.

Can you come up with some adjectives for your father or
your relationship with him?

He is my teacher. Over my lifetime, he has taught me more
about what is actually important than any teacher ever can.
What kind of things does he think is important?

You have to be honest with yourself, be true to people.
He’s taught me a lot about leadership. You can’t lie. You
have to do what’s right even it’s the hardest thing in the
world for you to do. Be responsible for your actions, how
to be honorable, be brave. He’s the ﬁrst to introduce me to
“chivalry.” It’s a phrase that was used during medieval era.
You protect those weaker than you. You always treat
people like people. You never make yourself look or act
like you are better than someone. People are always equal,
no matter what has happened to them. You always help
people who need it. . .A lot of people say chivalry is dead,
because it just isn’t happening. People step on people to
get to the top. When the world was created, it was hoped
that people could live this way. Instead of people stepping
on people, it would be people helping other people out, and
the strong would pull up the weak. That stuff seems very
important to me. I don’t see how people can hurt other
people and go on thinking that life is perfect.

One can see that the inﬂuence John’s father had on him went way beyond science. It was

this most inﬂuential ﬁgure in his life that John was telling me about who had a scientist’s

habit of mind and that habit of mind had been adopted by John.

Interviewer:

John:

Do you think that your relationship with your father has
anything to do with your interest in science?

Yes. Science to me is basically the study and research of
things. If my father hadn’t been the type of person he was,

85

Interviewer:

John:

I probably would have been just like a lot of people who
just say, “That’s that because of that. I don’t need to learn
any more. What I need to learn will come to me
eventually.” But he did teach the way he did. I go out. I
am interested in jets and planes. I ﬁgure out everything I
can. Just any interest I have, I just go and get it, and ﬁgure
it all out.

In terms of affecting your interest in science, how
important is your relationship with your father?

Very inﬂuential. Probably if he wasn’t around, and I just
went to class, I would be very similar to a lot of people,
who just go and leave the classroom, go on to party.

Similar to Richard’s father and John’s father, Derek’s (male, uninterested) mother

was not particularly interested in science. Although she did not “push” Derek to think

like a scientist like Richard’s and John’s fathers did, she had this “curiosity” toward

knowledge, which was picked up by Derek.

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:
Derek:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

I think indirectly my parents, probably my mom. Curiosity,
I think I acquired from her, just being curious about
different things, wanting to acquire different knowledge...
How did you acquire curiosity from your mom?

I don’t know. It’s probably genetic. She’s more interested
in things, wanting to acquire knowledge. I have always
been that way about every subject, every aspect in my life.

I have been curious about things.

Derek’s mother was not only a model of curiosity, but also a supportive ﬁgure for what

Derek was curious to know more about. She helped him collect materials he needed,

acquire information he was interested in learning about, and get his questions answered.

Her support, Derek claimed, was very important for his interest in science.

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

So it was more that you are like her, but not so much about
her teaching you, or interacting with you?

Just by taking me to places, like museums, science centers.
I guess I go to her ﬁrst to ask her. I probably know more
science than she does, but I wouldn’t be afraid of asking
her: “How does this work?” “How does that work?” “How
does the radio work?” “Help me collect some leaves.”
“Show me what poison ivy is.”

It seems that you had a lot of questions and your mom
responded in a helpful way. Can you say more about how
she supported you?

86

R.Q.#3-3.

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Whatever book I wanted she would be willing to get for
me. She would be willing to answer the questions. She
would be patient with me. She stayed up late to watch
whatever is on NOVA, Mr. Wizard.

Do you think your interaction with your mother affected
your interest in science?

Yes, because she’s patient enough to answer questions.
She would let me pursue my interest. She’s open to
whatever I want to do. Things that I need in classroom, she
would help me with.

Is she herself interested in science?

No, not as much as I am.

So she’s more supportive of your interest?

Yes.

How would you describe your interaction with your
mother?

She’s helpful. She’s always open to any question. She let
me explore, bought me a chemistry set, took me to the
science places and book stores.

Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
mother?

Supportive and helpful in my learning. I think a lot of
people’s curiosity comes from an early age, being able to
interact with parents in that way, especially science, if they
don’t get it in the classroom. I think curiosity is built up in
little kids in a lot of things.

Do you think that your relationship with your mother has
anything to do with your interest in science?

Yes, she was probably the one who kept me the most
interested during certain points in my life... She was
always open to anything I had to ask.

In terms of affecting your interest in science, how
important is your relationship and interaction with your
mother?

I think it’s very important to have someone to go to, like a
resource, somebody who will help me alone, just being
supportive.

Interest-lowering Experiences Accompanied by Negative Relationships

with Inﬂuential Figures

The data revealed that some participants who were uninterested in science not

only perceived a lack of interest-raising relationships, but also attributed their lack of
interest to interest-lowering relationships with inﬂuential ﬁgures connected to science. In

other words, the ﬁndings pointed out that inﬂuential relationships can work in the

87

interest-lowering direction as well as the interest-raising direction. Following are some

examples of interest-lowering relationships.

When Bert (male, uninterested) talked about his developmental curve of interest

in science, he mentioned one negative experience with a junior high school science

teacher. Bert was not getting the help he needed from the teacher, and he was not

receiving the grades he wanted.

Bert:

...I think junior high really had an impact on my science,
because one year I had a teacher I didn’t like at all. It was
very hard for me in that class. I didn’t feel that I got a lot
of help from him. He wasn’t willing to offer a lot of help to
any of the students. That was probably the only negative
thing. But besides that, I would say the grades I would get
back for what I was doing in science also discouraged me
from science, because I have always liked my grades to be
high. Science was always a struggle for me. I wasn’t
getting the grades I wanted, so I wasn’t interested after that.

Bert further explained that the problem was not inherent in the materials to be learned. It

was more due to the fact that the teacher did not provide help when it was needed, and

that discouraged him from even asking for help any more.

Interviewer:

Bert:

When you said the class was hard, do you mean the
materials or the atmosphere?

I think it was more the atmosphere. I don’t think the
material was necessarily something I would never be able
to understand. I think just the way he had us go about
doing it. He would lecture one day. We would have to
take notes, but we were in the seventh or eighth grade, we
didn’t even know what a lecture was when you were just
put into a junior high school. I remember for maybe a
month, we had a series of experiments to do. Maybe they
were not experiments, just projects. I think we had twenty.
You had to get the one completely right before you go on to
the next. When you asked him questions. . .he would throw
the questions back on you. It’s like I didn’t even
understand in the ﬁrst place, how am I going to ...He
wouldn’t give a direct answer, so it was discouraging to
even ask him any questions. I didn’t enjoy that.

Although Edna (female, uninterested) had a cousin who increased her interest in

science, most of her school experiences lowered her interest. Here she talked about how

88

hard it became for her to understand and care about science in school, even though she

started out with the curiosity to know more about the world.

Interviewer:

Edna:

Interviewer:
Edna:

Interviewer:
Edna:

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

I lost interest in science in high school, because it was
getting so hard. I just couldn’t understand it. Some kids
can understand it. They really enjoyed it... I didn’t want
to be there. It just made it even harder for me.

What did your interest look like before that?

Before I was really interested. Basically they always tried
to ﬁnd cures and stuff like that. I was like, “If I can ﬁnd a
cure, I can be famous.” It was just a lot easier. I wanted to
know how we evolved, and about the environment that we
were in, what’s going on in the air. Like our teacher told us
there are so many micro-organisms in the air. It just
amazed me.

What did your interest look like after the hard courses?

I was like, “Wow, this is a lot to know. This doesn’t
interest me any more.” It was so many facts thrown at me.
Maybe it was like every year I went to a different high
school. Some professors didn’t care if you understood it or
not. It was just like, “Here. This is what it does.
Remember it for the test.” It wasn’t interesting for you to
just know, just like you know other things like basketball or
football. It was just not interesting for me to even know
anymore. It was just like I don’t understand it. Okay. I
know there is stuff in the air. I was taught all this. They
get more technical, trying to tell you what is in the air is
this, and they get this from this. If you know that, that’s all
it is. There is nothing else behind it. That’s just all it is.

' Edna explained that school science had been hard for her, because there were too many

facts thrown at her with no time for discussion and questions. Passing the tests seemed to

become the only reason for learning. After a while, she just did not care about it any

more.

Interviewer:

Edna:

Am I understanding you right that it seems that in earlier
years, you thought it was fascinating that there are so many
organisms in the air, and you wanted to learn more about
that. Someone might say that your high school courses
were helping you to learn more about that, but you felt that
they threw too many facts at you just for the purpose of
tests. It seems that that’s all. There is nothing beyond that.
It’s not leading to anything more interesting...

Right. They were just like no discussion, no why they are
there. It was basically the way the teacher taught it, like
“It’s here because of this.” There wasn’t time for

89

Interviewer:

Edna:

questions. It was just like, “This is why it’s here.
Remember it. This is important for the test.” So you
would just write down notes why it’s important. Soon it
became such a habit, you just write down notes and... you
don’t even know what you were writing, so when it’s time
to remember for test, you just look at your notes, and say
“Okay, this is what he’s talking about. Remember it.
That’s all.” You know, you had interest in other things,
like, are you going to make the cheering team, or the boy
behind you is cute. You just don’t care about it any more.
Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science negatively?

Just teachers. The way they teach it. . .You have to
understand it to really be interested in it, or it has to be
something that you already are interested in and you want
to know more about. Basically it’s like they are told what
they have to teach for this class, and they go over that.
There is no like, “Well, I know this is interesting,” like
interesting facts at the beginning of the class, like “Do you
know what’s happening outside?” It’s just like, “We are
here. We are going to do our job, and we are going home.”
There is no motivation for the students to like it. I don’t
understand how people do it. I guess if you already know,
you don’t have to be motivated, you just ﬁnd this
...interesting.

Edna also expressed how the “not caring” attitude of teachers made her lose interest in

science.

Interviewer:

Edna:
Interviewer:
Edna:

Interviewer:
Edna:

Interviewer:

Edna:

How would you describe your interactions with those
teachers?

Bitter, very bitter.

Why?

Because I can’t tell them how they can teach their classes,
or how they should write up their syllabus or what they
want to concentrate on. They know they know. They have
been doing the same thing for six years, doing the same
boring... They know it’s boring because half of the class
was asleep, talking, or distracted, but they just keep on
going. Listen or not, I just want to hurry up. They just got
the attitude that I want to ﬁnish this hour of class and just
go home.

Can you come up with some adjectives for those teachers?
They are very educated, but they are bored teachers.

Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
relationships with the teachers?

It would be like non-existing. I would go up and say, “I
don’t understand this.” They would be like, “Read chapter
three. Just read it again. Just take notes.” It wouldn’t be
an in-depth thing, because another class is coming in. They
want to clear the room.

90

Interviewer:

Edna:
Interviewer:

Edna:

So your interaction with them was basically that they
lectured, not too much face-to-face interaction?

Right.

Do you think that your relationship with your teacher has
anything to do with your interest in science?

I think so, because I think they could have made it a lot
more interesting - broke it down into terms so we can
understand. Before putting it back in that term, they can
use really really complex words, and they can just tell you
exactly what it means, then they would start using that
word, then they would just change, and you would know,
because the repetition of them like, “This is a hemisphere.
This is a hemisphere. This is something else. This is a
hemisphere.” I think it would be easier for me to
understand. I think the reason that I do not like science is
because all science teachers that I had were very boring, no
relationship with the class. They just wanted to do their
job. They just wanted to do what they were paid for, and
they would leave. They didn’t stay and try to motivate us
more.

Then Edna described her vision of a good teacher-student relationship, which would be

characterized by paying attention to the student, understanding the student, providing

support for the student’s learning when it was needed.

Interviewer:
Edna:

What would a good relationship look like?

Just interaction with the class, like know my name, know
that I am trying. I am trying to understand. I am coming to
you everyday after class. I want to talk about it. Take ﬁve
minutes out. Tell me to meet you in the hall, like ﬁve
minutes when you are taking a break, so I can just
understand exactly what you are talking about. I guess it’s
just like you have to pay attention to all your students. I
know it’s hard. The ones who come to you with questions,
you should not just brush them away. You should let them
know exactly what they need to know. I don’t think they
should just like brush you away. You are just another
student. They wanted to go home. They really didn’t want
to talk about it. They are tired. I can understand that, but
when it’s going to affect somebody, like me... I hate
science just because of my teachers. When it’s going to
affect somebody, you should take some time out, because a
lot of students don’t even approach teachers like that...

Research question #2 and research question #3 each addressed one prediction

from the hypothesis under examination. The results, as described above, indicate that

although the prediction stated in research question #2 was consistent with the ﬁndings,

91

the prediction stated in research question #3 did not hold true for many students (7 out of
12). The ﬁndings related to research questions #2 and #3, on one hand, suggest that the
hypothesis that guided this study only constitutes one possible mechanism for the
development of student interest in science. There are certainly other mechanisms for
students to develop an interest in science. On the other hand, the results do indicate that
interpersonal relationships can play a role in many students’ development of interest in
science. Positive inﬂuential interpersonal relationships can start the interest (e.g., Edna’s
relationship with her cousin, pp. 81-83; Tom’s relationship with his father, p 112-113),
sustain the interest (e.g., Derek’s relationship with his mother, pp. 86-87), and/or
intensify/focus the interest (e.g., Linda’s relationship with her high school biology
teacher, p. 69-71; Melissa’s relationship with the surgeon, pp. 75-76; Simon’s
relationship with his high school biology teacher, p. 106,115). Negative interpersonal
relationships can kill the existing interest (e.g., Edna’s relationship with her high school
science teachers, pp. 88-91). In other words, the mechanism suggested in the hypothesis
is a valid mechanism that has accounted for a signiﬁcant number of students’
development of interest in science. Therefore, it is worth exploring in more depth what
qualities of interpersonal relationships have what effects on the development of student

interest in science.

Qualities of Interest-raising Relationships and Interest-lowering Relationships (R.Q.#4)
Research question #4 examines the characteristics associated with relationships that
facilitated the development of interest in science, and the characteristics associated with
relationships that hindered the development of interest in science. During the interviews,
nineteen students (6 male interested, 3 male uninterested, 6 female interested, 4 female
uninterested) out of a total of 24 mentioned one or a few interest-raising experience(s) in

which I could easily identify at least one heavily involved person(s). Four students (I

92

male interested, 1 male uninterested, 2 female uninterested) mentioned interest-lowering
experiences which involved (an) inﬂuential ﬁgure(s). The total number of interest-raising
relationships mentioned was twenty-seven. The total number of interest-lowering
relationships mentioned was four. Using each piece of interest-raising or interest-
lowering experience as a unit of analysis, I tried to understand the characteristics of the
interpersonal relationships associated with the interest-raising experiences as well as the
characteristics of the interpersonal relationships associated with the interest-lowering
experiences. It was found that as the students described their interest-affecting
experiences associated with an inﬂuential ﬁgure, they mentioned four kinds of
information about the relationship: (1) how they perceived the relation between this
inﬂuential ﬁgure and science, (2) how they perceived the ways the inﬂuential ﬁgure
mediated the relation between science and themselves, (3) what emotions/motivations
were conveyed and/or created between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and the students, and (4) how
they perceived the personal aspect of the relationship between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and
themselves.

One might wonder why I treated the above-mentioned four kinds of information as
information about a relationship, because at ﬁrst glance they did not seem to be all about
a relationship per se. For instance, the ﬁrst kind of information seemed to be about
something between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and science, rather than something between the
inﬂuential ﬁgure and the student. Some clariﬁcation will be provided here. The reason I
treated the four kinds of information as information about a relationship came from
Baldwin’s idea of relational schema (1992). As discussed in Chapter 2, according to
Baldwin, a student’s perception of his/her relationship with an inﬂuential ﬁgure should
contain three components: how the student perceives the inﬂuential ﬁgure (other-with-
self), how the student perceives the ways the inﬂuential ﬁgure perceives the student (self-

with-other), how the student perceives the pattern of interaction between the inﬂuential

93

ﬁgure and the student. The ﬁrst kind of information described in the previous paragraph
proved to be important when I tried to understand how the student perceived the
inﬂuential ﬁgure. The second and third kinds of information described in the previous
paragraph were primarily about patterns of interaction. The fourth kind of information
was about certain patterns of interaction with strong implications about how the
inﬂuential ﬁgure perceived the student. The meaning of each kind of information will be

further revealed as I describe ﬁndings with regard to each category.

R.Q.#4-l. Relation between the Inﬂuential Figure and Science

In interest-raising relationships, the inﬂuential ﬁgures were often perceived by the
students as having a positive relation with science. They were described as being
engaged in science at the behavioral level, the cognitive level, and/or the motivational

level (Table 9).

94

Table 9

Relation between the Inﬂuential Figure and Science

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender Inﬂuential ﬁgure Practice in a Knowledge lnterested/
science- able/ curious/
related ﬁeld smart in excited about
(behavioral science science
engagement) (cognitive (motivational

engagement) engagement)

Adam MI Father x

Grandfather x
Sci. T x
Charles MI HS Physics T x
Sister x x x

Mark MI College Prof x x x

Richard MI Father

Simon Ml HS biology x

Tom Ml Father x

MS & HS T x

Brice MU

Bert MU

Derek MU Mother x

David MU

John MU Father x

Martin MU Sci. T x

Amelia Fl HS biology T x

Mother x

Andrea Fl HS genetics T x

Linda FI HS biology T x x

Melissa F1 Surgeon x x

Rebecca F I ES Sci. T x

Brother X

Sarah F I MS Sci. T x x

HS Sci. T x x

Anna F U Brother x x

Angela F U

Edna FU Cousin x x x

HS astronomy T x x x

Elza FU HS physics T x

Julie FU Mother

Theresa FU

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, FI: female interested, FU: female uninterested

HS: High School, MS: Middle School, ES: Elementary school
Sci: Science, T: Teacher(s), Prof: Professor

95

 

The most commonly mentioned behavioral engagement with science of the

inﬂuential ﬁgure was practicing or learning in a science-related ﬁeld. Twenty-two out of

the 27 interest-raising ﬁgures were described as practicing in a science-related ﬁeld.

Tom’s (male, interested) father is one example.

Interviewer:

Torn:
Interviewer:
Tom:

Is there any person in you life who has affected your
interest in science?

My science teachers, Mr. Wizard, and my dad.

How did your dad affect your interest in science?

I saw him go out to work everyday. I wanted to know what
he did at work. He tried to explain, but I still don’t
understand that well. . .He’s some kind of an engineer,
doing satellite photos, remote sensing. They can look at
satellite photos and tell where there is vegetation growing.

Seven interest-raising ﬁgures were described as knowledgeable or smart in science. This

description reﬂected the student’s perception of the inﬂuential ﬁgure’s cognitive

engagement with science. Sarah’s (female, interested) biology teacher is one example.

Interviewer:

Sarah:

Interviewer:

Sarah:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

My biology teacher, my junior year in high school. Ms.
Kuhn, my junior year biology teacher. She’s so smart, like
some teachers you can really learn from, really absorb
everything they are saying to you...

When you say she is smart, do you mean she knows science
well or she is smart in teaching?

She’s both. She’s very intelligent. She used to be a genetic
engineer, I think. She’s just a very intelligent woman. She
can teach you if you want to learn. Her teaching methods
are good too. . .When I did talk to her about science, it was
like, “Wow! She is so smart.” If I had a question, she
would not hesitate to help. She would always help.

Five interest-raising ﬁgures were described as interested in science, or curious about

science. This description reﬂected the motivational engagement with science of this

person. The following two examples demonstrate the inﬂuential ﬁgure being interested

in science or curious about science.

Interviewer:

Charles:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

My sister. She always likes science. She’s got a major in
biology from the University of Michigan. . .It inﬂuenced

96

Interviewer:
Edna:
Interviewer:
Edna:

me. Because she’s always interested in it, I became exposed
to it, and became interested in it...

at t *

Can you tell me something that interests you a lot?
Astronomy.

Why is that interesting?

It’s just something that no matter how hard they are trying
to rub their brains to ﬁnd out what’s really going on, we
just don’t know. We are always wondering, “Is there life
on Mars”. . .I don’t know. It’s just so interesting. I had a
really good astronomy teacher. I think that’s what really
made me get into it. . .It was just really interesting, because
he was so exited about the topic. . .When people are excited
about something, it makes you think “Why is he so
excited? Maybe I am not getting this. Maybe I will
understand it.” It makes you want to understand it more, or
try to understand it, so you understand why he’s so excited
about it.

A different pattern existed in the four interest-lowering relationships with regard

to the relation between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and science. Although the four interest-

lowering inﬂuential ﬁgures all practiced in a science-related ﬁeld, there was a complete

lack of mentioning of their positive cognitive or motivational engagement in science. In

fact, some negative sides of cognitive and motivational aspects were mentioned about one

interest-lowering inﬂuential ﬁgure. When Mark (male, interested) talked about why he

was not interested in science before he came to Michigan State University, he mentioned

that his high school teachers were not knowledgeable about science, did not seem to care

about science, and that lowered his interest in science.

Mark:
Interviewer:
Mark:

In high school my teachers were not that great.

What made your teachers not great?

Some of the teachers didn’t major in any science course in
my high school. They were basically reading from the
teacher’s edition book. They really didn’t know that much
about what they were talking about. It was hard for them to
tell me what they were trying to say...

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:
Mark:

Interviewer:

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

My teachers in high school were at least part of the reason
that I didn’t have an interest in science.

How did that affect you?

97

 

Mark: Like the teachers here, you can tell that they know what
they are talking about. They are interested in it. They want
you to learn what they know, so it’s easier to learn. The
teachers in high school, when they didn’t really care about
what they were talking about, it’s hard for you to
understand.

Interviewer: You mentioned that they didn’t have enough knowledge,
and they didn’t seem to care. Can you talk a little bit more
about each?

Mark: I felt that in my science classes, they really didn’t have a
high interest in science. They just seemed to read straight
out of the teachers’ edition book. They wrote the problems
down on the board. They wouldn’t discuss anything further
than that. They didn’t seem to be excited about it.

R.Q.#4-2. How the Inﬂuential Figure Mediated a Relation between the Student and
Science

Twenty-one out of the twenty-seven interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures were
described as having done something to mediate the relation between science and the
student. The things done by the inﬂuential ﬁgures to promote a relation between science
and the student were categorized into three categories: A, pointing out how science can be
meaningful and/or interesting to the student, B, helping the student to experience science
through ﬁrst-hand experiences, and C, helpfully responding to the student’s desire of
wanting to know (Table 10). The meaning of each category will be further revealed by

the examples given after Table 10.

98

How the Inﬂuential Figure Mediated the Relation between the Student and Science

Table 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Inﬂuential ﬁgure Pointed out Helped me Responded
Interest how experience to my
science science desire of
could be through wanting to
meaningful seeing, know in
and touching, helpful
interesting etc. ways
to me
Adam Ml Father x
Grandfather x
Sci. T x
Charles Ml HS Physics T
Sister x
Mark Ml College Pro x
Richard MI Father
Simon Ml HS biology T. x x
Tom MI Father x x x
MS& HS T x x
Brice MU
Bert MU
Derek MU Mother x x
David MU
John MU Father
Martin MU Sci T x x
Amelia Fl HS biology T x x
Mother
Andrea Fl HS genetics T x x x
Linda Fl HS biology T x x x
Melissa F I Surgeon
Rebecca Fl ES Sci T x
Brother x
Sarah Fl MS Sci T x
HS Sci T x x x
Anna FU Brother x x
Angela F U
Edna FU Cousin x x x
HS astronomy T x x
Elza FU HS physics T x x
Julie FU Mother
Theresa FU

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, Fl: female interested, FU: female uninterested

HS: High School, MS: Middle School, ES: Elementary school

Sci: Science, T: Teacher(s), Prof: Professor

 

R.Q.#4-2.A. Pointing Out How Science Can Be Meaningful and/0r Interesting to the
Student

Thirteen interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures were mentioned as either pointing out

or helping the students to experience how science could be meaningful or interesting to

them.

Interviewer:

Mark:
Interviewer:
Mark:

Interviewer:
Mark:

Interviewer:

Elza:

Is there any person who has affected your interest in
science?

The college professors I have right now.

Do you have a particular one in mind?

My psychology professor right now. . .He makes everything
easier to learn. He uses a lot of examples that apply to my
daily life.

Can you give me an example?

He just talked about the effects of alcohol the other day. It
just relates to me because my friends really like alcohol. It
makes me think about it all the time. He was talking about
the scientiﬁc effects of alcohol on motor skills.

* * *

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

...I had a really good physics teacher in high school. . .We
were always doing different types of experiments, like
bumping cars together. We would have homework
assignments. Once my friend and I did it together. It was
understanding motion. It was to play pull. I thought it was
really fun, because it was something that applies to real life
more to me. It would be more like something that goes on
everyday...

R.Q.#4-2.B. Helping the Student to Experience Science Through F irst-hand
Experiences

Sixteen interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures were described by the students as

having done something to help the student obtain ﬁrst-hand experiences in science by

seeing, touching, and so forth.

Interviewer:

Simon:
Interviewer:
Simon:

Is there any person in you life who has affected your
interest in science?

...my high school freshman biology teacher. . ..

How would you describe your interaction with this teacher?
We did dissections. She helped us to work with frogs and
lab hearts. She would bring things and walked around to

100

 

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:

Andrea:

let us see them. We measured openings of skulls. She gets
you involved. ..

II * all

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest
in science?

Probably that one genetics class I took. It got me to think a
lot about how genetics affects people, animals, and
plants...

Can you tell me what characteristics of that class made you
interested?

I really liked the teacher. . . just doing the fruit-ﬂy
experiment. They were like my babies. I had them for the
whole semester. I was so sad when they died. I guess it
was just having my own experiment and learning about it,
seeing it actually happen...

R.Q.#4-2.C. Helpfully Responding to the Student ’s Desire of Wanting to Know

Thirteen interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures were mentioned as responding

helpfully to the student’s desire of wanting to know.

Interviewer:

Adam:
Interviewer:
Adam:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Interviewer:

Derek:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

Deﬁnitely my dad. ..

Can you describe your interaction with your father?

We were always real close. He helped me out. I have
always asked questions. If there is anything out there I am
interested in, he would at least try to answer my questions.

It II II

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

I think indirectly my parents, probably my mom. . . just by
taking me to places, like museums, science centers. I guess
I go to her ﬁrst to ask her. I probably know more science
than she does, but I wouldn’t be afraid of asking her: “How
does this work?” “How does that work?” “How does the
radio work?” “Help me collect some leaves.” “Show me
what poison ivy is.”

It seems that you had a lot of questions and your mom
responded in a helpful way. Can you say more about how
she supported you?

Whatever book I wanted she would be willing to get for
me. She would be willing to answer the questions. She
would be patient with me. She stayed up late to watch
whatever is on NOVA, Mr. Wizard.

101

Interviewer:

Linda:

Interviewer:
Linda:

I! * *

Can you tell me some of your major experiences with
science?

My freshman year in high school I had biology, and that
was a great class. I had a great teacher. That’s probably
why I am so interested in that now...

What about that class made it so special for you?
Probably because it seemed so relevant to my everyday
life. . .I had a great teacher. . .We had a lot of opportunities
to have our questions answered. If we were confused, he
gave us reviews. . .He went out of his way to make sure we
understood everything...

Again, a different pattern existed in the four interest-lowering relationships with

regard to how the inﬂuential ﬁgures mediated the relation between the student and

science. There was a complete lack of mentioning any of the three positive aspects in

these four relationships. Opposite to interest-raising relationships, one interest-lowering

ﬁgure was complained about for not providing hands-on experience to help students

learn, another two ﬁgures were described as “not providing help when the students

needed it.” Edna’s (female, uninterested) comments reﬂected a lack of hands-on

experience; Bert’s (male, uninterested) comments reﬂected a lack of help received from

the inﬂuential ﬁgure.

Edna:

Bert:

When I got in high school, all my science teachers were
just boring, boring, boring. We didn’t go out of the
classroom. If he said anything about organisms in the dirt,
he wouldn’t bring in anything. You have to motivate
yourself to walk to the dirt to see exactly what he was
talking about, but you wouldn’t understand it.

I" t It

When you asked him (junior high science teacher)
questions, he would throw the questions back to you. It’s
like I didn’t even understand in the ﬁrst place, how am I
going to. . .He wouldn’t give a direct answer, so it was
discouraging to even ask him any questions.

102

R.Q.#4-3. Emotions/Motivations Conveved and/or Created between the Inﬂuential
Ligure and the Student

The only frequently mentioned emotion conveyed by the interest-raising
inﬂuential ﬁgures while doing science together with the students is the feeling of
enthusiasm for helping the student learn and/or appreciate science. The most frequently
mentioned emotion that was created in the student was the sense of wonder or amazement
about science. The most important motivation conveyed or created between the interest-
raising inﬂuential ﬁgure and the student was the motivation to reach a higher standard, to

ﬁgure out, and to know more (Table 11).

103

Table I 1

Emotions/Motivations Conveyed/Created between the Inﬂuential Figure and the Student

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender Inﬂuential ﬁgure Showed Helped me Challenged
enthusiasm experience me with a
in helping wonder/ high
me learn amazement expectation
science in science
Adam Ml Father
Grandfather x
Sci T

Charles Ml HS Physics T x x
Sister

Mark Ml College Prof x

Richard MI Father x

Simon MI HS biology T x x x

Tom MI Father

M.S & HS T x

Brice MU

Bert MU

Derek MU Mother

David MU

John MU Father x

Martin MU Sci. T

Amelia Fl H.S biology T x

Mother

Andrea F l HSgenetics T x

Linda Fl HS biology T x x

Melissa Fl Surgeon x

Rebecca Fl ES Sci T

Brother x

Sarah F 1 MS Sci T

HS Sci. T

Anna F U Brother

Angela FU

Edna FU Cousin x x

HS astronomy T x x

Elza FU HS physics T

Julie F U Mother

Theresa FU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ml: male interested, MU: male uninterested, FI: female interested, FU: female uninterested
HS: High School, MS: Middle School, ES: Elementary school
Sci: Science, T: Teacher(s), Prof: Professor

104

Ten out of the twenty seven interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures were felt by the

students as “wanting the student to learn” due to the various ways they helped the

students.

Interviewer:

Charles:

Can you tell me some of your major experiences with
science?

...My physics class in high school. I liked it. It was
challenging. I went to a Catholic school. An old priest was
our teacher. He wanted you to learn from the course. It’s
not only memorizing theories, but being able to apply them
to things in your life, like how sound waves travel in the air
so we hear things the way we do.

Here Charles emphasized how his physics teacher wanted them to truly understand what

they were learning, and be able to apply what they learned to their life. Andrea

emphasized how her teacher would help her patiently until she understood better.

Interviewer:
Andrea:
Interviewer:
Andrea:
Interviewer:

Andrea:
Interviewer:

Andrea:
Interviewer:
Andrea:

How did your interest in science start?

Probably in high school, biology class.

Why?

Probably because of the teacher. ..

What did the teacher do to make you more interested in
science?

I don’t really know. I just thought, “He’s a really good
teacher” . .I felt that he interacted with students more...
Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
teacher?

Helpful, understanding, respectful.

Can you tell me more what you mean by understanding?
Because most teachers, if you don’t understand something,
they don’t even care. They would just be like, “I will go
over it again,” then “Go back to your seat.” He was like, if
you have a question, you don’t understand it, he would
explain it, do it over and over until you understood the
concept a little better.

When Edna described the astronomy teacher who made her really interested in

astronomy, she emphasized how he actively took the initiative to understand the

difﬁculties of learning that students were experiencing, and to offer help.

Edna:

...He was just really interactive. He knew everybody. He
knew what you were having trouble with. He would ask
you, “Are you still having trouble with that? Let me try to
explain that to you.” He really liked teaching...

105

The sense of amazement or wonder was mentioned in episodes with ﬁve interest-

raising inﬂuential ﬁgures. Following are two examples.

Interviewer:

Simon:

Interviewer:
Simon:

Interviewer:
Edna:
Interviewer:
Edna:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

...my high school freshman biology teacher. She was hard.
She challenged you, but she made it interesting. I got
straight Cs in her class, but I never learned as much as I
learned there in any other class...

Did you become more interested in science?

At ﬁrst I felt overwhelmed. For a little while I thought this
was a mistake. Then I started working toward what she
wanted. Once I got it going, I realized that this can be
interesting and fun, even when there’s so much work.
Freshman biology goes inside. It’s just amazing all this is
happening inside people. Yeah, I became more interested...

* * *

Can you tell me something that interests you a lot?
Astronomy.

Why is that interesting?

It’s just something that no matter how hard they are trying
to rub their brains to ﬁnd out what’s really going on, we
just don’t know. We are always wondering... “Is there life
on Mars”. . .It’s just so mysterious. . .I had a really good
astronomy teacher. I think that’s what really made me get
into it. . .He was just like “You know, it’s just so interesting.
There is so much stuff that we don’t know. The ...of the
moon, the volcanoes, how do they get there, ...” Just stuff
like that. It was just really interesting.

Five students mentioned how the interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgure challenged

him/her to reach a higher standard, to ﬁgure out and to know more. John’s father and

Richard’s father would be good examples to illustrate how they did it.

Interviewer:

John:

Interviewer:
John:

Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science?

My father. I used to be kind of like. . .someone told me
something. It’s a fact. It’s true. This table, is the most
solid thing in the world, as solid as a rock. Nothing can get
through it. I guess he took Socrates. . .He taught me to
question everything...

It seems that your father tends to

He pushed me like “why,” like this paper. . .why doesn’t it
break when you do that.

Later on in the interview,

Interviewer:

Why does that make you more interested in science?

106

John: Because it doesn’t let me slide. I have to always ﬁgure out
for myself. It’s kind of hard once in a while.

Interviewer: Anything else?

John: He has always taught me not to accept things as you see
them on the surface, but if you want to understand them,
you have to look at them extremely close. You get to the
point where it’s almost a part of you to really understand it,

then you get by.
IR * *
Richard: I think another reason why I see my life as being so highly

believing in science is because when I was a kid I used to
say things that I heard, like, “Dad I heard that this and this
happened.” My dad would say, “How do you know that
happened for sure?” He would just ask me that question. I
would say, “That’s what somebody said.” He would say,
“How do you know if that person was true with you? How
do you know what you read is true? You can’t believe
everything you read or hear or see.” Hearing that so many
times as a child when I didn’t have the reasoning to actually
understand what he was saying, it frustrated me so to have
my father tell me that it’s not true. I thought I was sharing
something important, something he would like to hear. I
think because of him saying that to me, it more and more
made me progress toward being a little bit more concise in
stating the things I believe and the things I actually take to

be true.

Interviewer: Do you think that has anything to do with your interest in
science?

Richard: I deﬁnitely think that it does. My father telling me that you

don’t know it’s necessarily true, as a kid it burned me up
inside. I wanted to pull the string and say, “See? Daddy,
it’s just here.” He would give me the same answer. Then I
went through a period that I didn’t share anything with my
father. I got tired of him saying that to me. Then I came to
a point that I got some evidence to back up and support
what I was telling him, claiming. It seemed that he would
believe me a little bit more. It was when I was 15 or 16.
From 6 to 12 was more like I was telling him things, and
him saying, “It’s not true.”

Once again, there was a complete lack of mentioning any of the three positive
aspects regarding emotions and motivations in the four interest-lowering relationships.
The descriptions of two interest-lowering ﬁgures were strongly characterized by a lack of

enthusiasm. Edna’s comments offer an example of it.

Interviewer: Is there any person in your life who has affected your
interest in science negatively?

107

Edna: Just teachers. The way they teach it. . .It’s just like, “We are
here. We are going to do our job, and we are going home.”
There is no motivation for the students to like it...

Interviewer: How would you describe your interactions with those

teachers?
Edna: Bitter. Very bitter.
Interviewer: Why?
Edna: ...They have been doing the same thing for six years, doing

the same boring. . .They knew it’s boring because half of the
class was asleep, talking, or distracted, but they just kept on
going. Listen or not, I just want to hurry up. They just got
the attitude that I want to ﬁnish this hour of class and just
go home.

R.Q.#4-4. Personal Aspect of the Relationship between the Inﬂuential Figure and the
Student

Before I report the ﬁndings in regard to this aspect of interpersonal relationships, I
would like to ﬁrst describe a challenge found in the process of data analysis of this part.
When the participants talked about their experiences with the inﬂuential ﬁgure(s), they
mentioned many things that happened between the inﬂuential ﬁgure(s) and themselves.
The participants used various ways to describe these experiences. Finding patterns
among these personal stories proved to be particularly challenging for me as a researcher,
because every person seemed to be describing his/her experience in his/her unique way.
Many words were used by the participants, yet it was hard to categorize them. For
example, one participant might have described his teacher as “always patient;” another
participant might have said her teacher was “warm and helpful,” while the third person
might have said his mother was “supportive.” It was hard to decide whether these
characteristics should be treated as similar or as different during the analysis. A decision
was made when I recognized this challenge. I decided to avoid becoming lost in the large
number of adjectives and other descriptions used by the participants, and try to step back
and look for a few somewhat higher-level and more meaningﬁil concepts to categorize
what I saw in these students’ stories with their inﬂuential ﬁgures. As a result of this

effort, I realized one thing. The students mentioned many things that happened between

108

them and the inﬂuential ﬁgure(s). These things vary a great deal regarding the extent to
which they were directly related to science learning. Yet many of them shared a
commonality: They seemed to convey a message to the student about how the inﬂuential
ﬁgure saw the student. For example, when a teacher took a student aside to explain to
him individually about the importance of doing homework, studying hard, and meeting a
challenge, it was quite possible that the student recognized that the teacher saw him as
someone important and someone carrying the potential to meet the challenge. When a
teacher shared his own feelings about things with the student, it was quite possible that
the student took it as a message that the teacher saw the student as someone worth
making friends with, and the teacher was trying to promote their mutual understanding. I
am aware that the “possible messages” that I saw were not 100% self-evident in the data.
However, I believe that they are very plausible possibilities of messages that were
conveyed by the inﬂuential ﬁgure to the student. In other words, the “possible messages”
that I saw and used in my analysis were high inferences that I drew from the data. Yet I
believe they were meaningful and legitimately-supported high inferences.

Based on the analytical method described above, three characteristics were
identiﬁed with regard to the personal aspect of interpersonal relationships. I found that
many relationships between the interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgure and the student carried
all or part of the following three qualities: A, caring, B, sharing, and C, launching (Table
12). A caring relationship is a relationship in which the inﬂuential ﬁgure made the
student receive the message “He cares about me. Therefore, I am important in his eyes.”
A sharing relationship is a relationship in which the inﬂuential ﬁgure and the student
liked to do things together, to reveal themselves to each other. In other words, they were
sharing their lives with each other. A launching relationship is a relationship in which the
student received a message “He sees my potential. Therefore, I can do better than I am

doing.”

109

Table 12

Personal Aspects of Interest-raising Relationships

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name Gender/ Inﬂuential ﬁgure Caring Sharing Launching
Interest
Adam Ml Father x x
Grandfather x
Sci T x x
Charles MI HS Physics T x
Sister x x
Mark Ml College Prof
Richard MI Father x
Simon MI HS biology T x x
Tom MI Father x x
MS & HS T
Brice MU
Bert MU
Derek MU Mother x x
David MU
John MU Father x x x
Martin MU Sci. T x
Amelia Fl HS biology T x
Mother x
Andrea FI HS genetics T x x x
Linda FI HS biology T x x
Melissa Fl Surgeon x
Rebecca Fl Elem Sci T
Brother x x
Sarah F I MS Sci T x x x
HS Sci T x x
Anna FU Brother x x
Angela FU
Edna FU Cousin x x
HS astronomy T x
Elza FU HS physics T
Julie FU Mother x x x
Theresa FU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MI: male interested, MU: male uninterested, FI: female interested, FU: female uninterested
HS: High School, M.: Middle School, ES: Elementary school
Sci: Science, T: Teacher(s), Prof: Professor

110

R.Q.#4-4.A. The Quality of Caring

Twenty out of the total twenty seven episodes with interest-raising inﬂuential
ﬁgures were identiﬁed as containing the quality of a caring relationship. The ways the
inﬂuential ﬁgure interacted with the student seemed to show the student that s/he and/or
his/her learning was important, and the inﬂuential ﬁgure cared about him/her. One
student did describe his interest-lowering teachers as “not enthusiastic” and “boring,” but
“cared and provided support when the students had questions.” The other three interest-
lowering relationships were all characterized by a lack of a caring attitude. The ﬁndings
here support Noddings’ idea that “if we want every individual child to become immersed

in centers of care, to care about things we can endorse as signiﬁcant, we must ﬁrst care

 

’ﬂ'lT-ha

for each child.” (1992). One example will be given from each of the four groups of
participants to illustrate the characteristic of caring in the interest-raising relationships.

When Simon (male, interested) talked about his relationship with his high school
biology teacher, he emphasized how much she cared, and how her behavior conveyed the
caring message.

Simon: ...She cared. She wanted everyone to do well. . .She went
out of her way. She would come before school, stay during
lunch, or stay after school to explain things to you. She
gave us her home phone number. A lot of teachers
wouldn’t do that. She was accessible.

Derek (male, uninterested) talked about how her mother cared for him and his learning by
responding to his desires for certain things, certain kinds of knowledge, or certain
activities.
Derek: ...Whatever book I wanted, she would be willing to get for
me. She would be willing to answer questions. She would
be patient with me. She stayed up late to watch whatever
was on NOVA, Mr. Wizard. ..She was open to whatever I

want to do, things that I need in classroom, she would help
me with. ..

Similar to Simon, Linda (female, interested) described how her high school biology

teacher cared, and “went out of his way” to help students learn.

111

Linda: My freshman year in high school, I had biology. . .I had a
great teacher. . .We had a lot of opportunities to have our
questions answered. If we were confused, he would give
reviews. . .If you had any questions, you could always ask
him. . .He went out of his way to make sure we understand

everything.

Interviewer: Went out of his way?

Linda: Like the review sessions. We had some for the ﬁnal. We
had reviews at 8:00 in the morning. I am sure he had better
things to do that day.

Edna (female, uninterested) talked about how her cousin cared about her and was always

willing to “set his time out” to help her.

Interviewer: Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your

cousin?
Edna: He’s helpful, sweet, caring, understanding. He’s smart.
Edna started crying here.
Interviewer: Why are you so touched?
Edna: Because he would help me when nobody else will help him.

When I had nobody to talk to, I could talk to him. He
helped me out. . .We are like buddies. Like a lab, or
anything he can help me out, he would set his time out to
help me out...

R.Q.#4-4.B. The Quality of Sharing

Sixteen out of the total twenty-seven episodes with interest-raising inﬂuential
ﬁgures could be identiﬁed as containing an element of sharing. None of the interest-
lowering relationships contained this component. The sharing implied that the two of
them liked to share their lives with each other. Some of the shared experiences were
about science, while many others were about various things in their lives. One example
will be given from each of the four groups to illustrate the quality of sharing in these
relationships.

Tom (male, interested) talked about how he and his father always did science
experiments and other things together in a loving relationship, and how that started his

interest in science.

Tom: When I was three, four, or ﬁve, I always wanted to do
science experiments with my dad. We mixed the whole

112

Interviewer:

Tom:

bunch of stuff together. I was having a great time. He gave
me a book with science experiments you could do at home.
We put the baking soda on the little thing, put them in
water and watched them go around. I think that’s how my
initial science interest started...

How would you describe your relationship with your father
when you were growing up?

Loving. He’s my dad. We always did stuff together. We
always built these model rockets. We launched them
together. It was really cool. . ..

Although John (male, uninterested) singed up for the uninterested group and reported a

low interest for learning science facts and concepts at school, he appeared very interested

in learning about certain science topics outside of school. John attributed this interest to

his relationship with his father. From his description of this relationship, one can see how

the two of them shared various learning experiences together. John learned a great deal

in this sharing relationship. His father also picked up one of John’s interests and made it

his own.

Interviewer:
John:

Interviewer:

John:

How would you describe your interaction with your father?
High. There is a lot, always doing stuff. He’s got a very
busy job, but when he comes home. . .everything gets left
behind. He focuses on kids and family. He’s really good at
that.

Can you give me some examples of the things you did with
him?

We used to go on the ocean, to the volcano. He showed us
all these cool things. We were taken to the middle of the
forest to these pools of warm water. I was shocked. That’s
the way I learned about hot springs. He took us to this cave
underground. It was completely dark. It’s amazing. It’s
just cool like that.

Later on in the interview...

Interviewer:

John:

Does your father have other personal interests that you
don’t have or you have?

He picked up ﬂying. He always knew I loved it. He wasn’t
quite sure. Then he said, “Well. I will see if I can do it
too.” He’s now a good pilot...

Sarah (female, interested) talked about how the inﬂuential biology teacher shared certain

experiences with her outside of biology, and how she knew that this teacher wanted to do

fun things with the students.

113

Interviewer: Can you tell me a little bit more about your interaction with
this teacher?

Sarah: She was the mentor for this RC club. I was the president of
that club, so I talked to her more. It was a club for students
who played RC sports, like soccer or football. They come
together and do fun things. She liked doing that. That was
fun, being able to talk to her other than science. . . .I know
she liked her students. She liked to provide fun things for
her students. She was in the RC club with me. I know she
wanted to do fun things with us.

Anna (female, uninterested) talked about how she and her brother shared each other’s life
on a daily basis, how much fun they had doing that, and how their relationship affected

her interest in social sciences.

Interviewer: Can you tell me more about your interaction and
relationship with your brother?

Anna: He’s basically my best friend. It’s more like I am
interested in some things, he’s interested in these other
things. When we go together, we just talk, talk, and talk
about everything. We used to have a daily routine.
Everyday I went to school and came back at night time.
We went to the store together and got the same thing.

Interviewer: How old were you when you were doing this?

Anna: We have done this all our life.
Later on in the interview...
Anna: ...We can relate to each other. When we were together, we

laughed. Everything is so funny. If I have a question I

might be interested in, he can answer it. It’s more like I
know the math, he knows the science. It’s fun to ﬁgure
things out when you can put the two together...

Interviewer: Do you think your relationship with your brother affects
your interest in science?

Anna: ...Yes in the social sciences, because he’s a gay. I was the
one who had to tell the family. I was the ﬁrst person he
told. That’s what brought us closer together. It made me
talk more about science, about things he is interested in.

R.Q.#4-4.C. The Quality of Launching

In seven out of the total twenty-seven interest-raising relationships, the inﬂuential
ﬁgure was described by the student as someone who did things that seemed to convey a
message to the student about the potential of the student - a potential that pointed to a

higher or better level, which the inﬂuential ﬁgure believed the student could reach,

114

 

although the student had not reached that level yet. None of the interest-lowering

relationships contained this component. Following are two examples.

Simon (male, interested) talked about how his high school biology teacher helped

him see how he could be a better student, and out of that experience, he did become a

better student.

Interviewer:

Simon:

Interviewer:
Simon:

Interviewer:
Simon:

Interviewer:

Simon:

Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your
high school biology teacher?

Challenging. She makes you work. ..She has high
expectations. You will have to meet them. If you don’t
meet them, switch out or fail.

Can you describe your relationship with her?

Interesting. I am one of those people who don’t like to do
homework. She explained to me that I couldn’t do that and
pass the class. She helped me to raise my conscience as a
student, in addition to all the stuff I learned about biology.
Did she help you individually or as a whole class?

Both. She explained to the whole class, also to me
individually. I am glad she did that. It really helped me.
She cared. She wanted everyone to do well...

Do you think your relationship with this teacher inﬂuenced
your interest in science?

I think so. I was interested before. After her class, I
learned a lot more about biology. I became a better student.
I learned that I had to do certain home work to be able to be
accomplished in any ﬁeld, and that class deﬁnitely helped
me be interested in science...

Andrea (female, interested) talked about how her high school science teacher helped her

see that she could achieve even though she felt unsure.

Interviewer:

Andrea:

Interviewer:
Andrea:

Is there anything that has affected the development of your
interest in science?

Probably that one genetics class I took. It got me thinking
a lot about how genetics affects people, animals, and
plants...

What characteristics of that class made you interested?

I really liked the teacher. . .Just doing the fruit-ﬂy
experiment. They were like my babies. I had them for the
whole semester. I was so sad when they died. I guess it
was just having my own experiment and learning about it,
seeing it actually happen. . .I had one experiment that failed.
They all died the ﬁrst time I tried it. It was good though. I
just liked the whole process.

115

Here Andrea mentioned a failing experience with her fruit-ﬂy experiment, yet she viewed
it as a positive experience. This made one wonder why she viewed a failure as a positive
experience. What Andrea said later on in the interview seemed to give a clue to it. Later
on in the interview, Andrea revealed how her teacher reassured the students in situations

when they were not so sure about what could be achieved.

Interviewer: Can you tell me more about this teacher?

Andrea: He was younger. He was enthusiastic. He was really
interested in what we were doing, in our successes and
failures with fruit ﬂies...

Interviewer: How did you sense that he was interested in your
experiment?

Andrea: He just always asked us about them. He helped us with
them. If we were frustrated, he reassured us...

Andrea pointed out that the teacher reassured the students when they experienced a
failure. In other words, the teacher conveyed to the students that they had the potential to
reach a higher goal even though they were not reaching it yet. This seemed to suggest a
plausible explanation for Andrea’s positive attitude toward the failure mentioned earlier
in the interview.

In summary, four qualities were found to be associated with interest-raising
relationships: (1) The inﬂuential ﬁgures were often perceived by the students as having a
positive relation with science. They were perceived as being engaged in science at the
behavioral level, the cognitive level, and/or the motivational level. (2) The inﬂuential
ﬁgures were often perceived to actively mediate the relation between the students and
science by pointing out how science can be meaningful/interesting, helping students
experience science through ﬁrst hand experience, and helpfully responding to the
students’ desire of wanting to know. (3) The inﬂuential ﬁgures conveyed enthusiasm and
created in the students a sense of wonder/amazement while doing science. (4) The
inﬂuential ﬁgures cared about the students and their learning, liked to share his/her life

with the students, and helped the students to see their potential as being higher than their

116

current performance level. Interest-lowering relationships were characterized as lacking

these qualities.

117

CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, I will ﬁrst present a summary of ﬁndings. Conclusions and
practical implications drawn from the ﬁndings will then be provided. Limitations of this

study and ideas for future research will be discussed.

Summary of Findings

The present study examined four research questions: (1) What do college students
mean when they say they are interested in science or uninterested in science? (2) Do
college students who are interested in science attribute their interest to interest-raising
interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were also interested in science and with whom
they had a good relationship? (3) Do college students who are uninterested in science
perceive a lack of interest-raising interactions with inﬂuential ﬁgures who were interested
in science and with whom they had a good relationship? (4) What perceived
characteristics are associated with relationships that facilitated the development of their
interest in science? What perceived characteristics are associated with relationships that
hindered the development of their interest in science?

The ﬁndings of the study revealed that three aspects of science were addressed by
the participants when they talked about their experiences, feelings, and beliefs about
science: (1) the epistemological nature of science, (2) life relevance of science, and (3)
science in relation to the student’s ability. No differential pattern was found between
students in the interested group and students in the uninterested group with regard to their
understanding of the epistemological nature of science except that only students in the
uninterested group described science as memorization. Students in the interested group

saw science as more related to everyday life and more helpful to people compared with

118

 

students in the uninterested group. Only students in the interested group described
science as something they were good at, while more students in the uninterested group
described science as something hard to understand.

The ﬁndings indicate that the conceptualization of interest as a person’s
dispositional preference toward a particular domain of activities either for an intrinsic
reason or for a self-determined instrumental reason was consistent with the participants’
ideas and experiences of interest. The ﬁndings also indicate that interest in science is a
rich and complicated entity. Most students had different levels of interest in the four
different areas of science: (1) learning science facts/concepts in school, (2) learning
science facts/concepts outside of school, (3) ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge in school,
and (4) ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge outside of school. In general, the participants in
the interested group were pretty much interested in the four areas of science, although
their interest levels in different areas tended to vary a little. In contrast to that, the
uninterested participants’ interest levels for the four areas varied a great deal.

Research question #2 and research question #3 each addressed one prediction
from the hypothesis under examination. The prediction stated in research question #2
was consistent with the ﬁndings. All twelve interested students said their interest either
started with, or was increased by, some positive experiences they had with one or a few
inﬂuential ﬁgures. Nine out of twelve students mentioned inﬂuential ﬁgures as predicted
and portrayed in the hypothesis - ﬁgures who were interested in science and/or practiced
in a science-related ﬁeld, and with whom the student had a good relationship. However,
the prediction stated in research question #3 did not hold true for many students.
Although ﬁve out of the twelve uninterested students did not mention any interest-raising
relationship, seven of them mentioned interest-raising relationships which were very
similar to those mentioned by the interested students. The ﬁndings related to research

questions #2 and #3, on one hand, suggested that the hypothesis that guided this study

119

might only constitute one of many mechanisms for the development of student interest in
science. Yet on the other hand, the results did indicate that interpersonal relationships
played a role in many students’ development of interest in science. Positive inﬂuential
interpersonal relationships can start the interest, sustain the interest, and/or
intensify/focus the interest. Negative interpersonal relationships can kill the existing
interest.

Four qualities were found to be associated with interest-raising relationships: (1)
The inﬂuential ﬁgure was perceived by the student as being positively engaged in science
at the behavioral level, the cognitive level, and/or the motivational level. (2) The
inﬂuential ﬁgure mediated the relation between the student and science by pointing out
how science can be meaningful and/or interesting to the student, helping the student to
experience science through ﬁrst-hand experiences, and helpfully responding to the
student’s desire of wanting to know. (3) The inﬂuential ﬁgure conveyed his/her own
positive emotions about engaging in science, as well as created positive emotions in the
student while they were engaged in science. (4) Between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and the
student there existed a personal relationship which was characterized by caring, sharing,
and launching. Interest-lowering relationships were generally characterized as lacking
these qualities.

Among all the possible aspects of comparison, differential patterns between two
genders were only found in two places: (1) With regard to life relevance of science, more
female uninterested students than male uninterested students mentioned science helps
people to solve problems and improve life. (2) With regard to how inﬂuential ﬁgures
mediated the relation between students and science, more female uninterested students
than male uninterested students mentioned “pointing out how science can be

meaningful/interesting.”

120

 

Conclusions and Practical Implications

This study had three purposes: (1) to understand the nature of college students’
interest in science, (2) to explore whether college students perceived their interpersonal
relationships affected the development of their interest in science, and (3) to investigate
what qualities of perceived interpersonal relationships had what effects in the
development of student interest in science.

With regard to the nature of college students’ interest in science, the results
indicated that student interest in science is a rich entity. The student who is uninterested
in one aspect of science can be quite interested in another. Instead of viewing a student
as being either interested in science or uninterested in science, it would be wiser for
parents and teachers to put effort into understanding the content and proﬁle of the
student’s interest. The current existing interest would be a good starting point for guiding
the student in learning science.

This study also revealed that many students who identiﬁed themselves as
uninterested in science actually looked very interested in some areas of science in some
contexts. Yet they all had a low interest in learning science facts/concepts in school.
Literature tells us that many students are not interested in science. This study tells us that
when students identify themselves in terms of interest in science, they tend to focus on
their interest in school learning of science facts/concepts. As mentioned by several
students in the uninterested group, in their experiences, school learning of science
fact/concepts involves a lot of memorization; and ﬁguring out scientiﬁc knowledge in
school often is not an authentic process of ﬁguring out. Putting all these together, we
seem to see a bigger picture, which indicates that many students identify themselves as
uninterested in science, while what they are uninterested in is mainly memorization of
science facts/concepts and unauthentic scientiﬁc processes. In other words, these
students probably appear uninterested in science at school, while the school science they
have experienced is not authentic science. This picture poses a challenge which should

be reﬂected on by science educators. While considering issues related to student interest

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in science, we need to be careful about our assumptions. It is important that we do not
misjudge a student’s interest in science based only on his/her interest in school science.

The ﬁndings also indicate that from the students’ perspective, interpersonal
relationships do facilitate or hinder the development of student interest in science in many
cases. Although direct causal inferences can not be drawn from the data, this study
revealed characteristics associated with interest-raising relationships and characteristics
associated with interest-lowering relationships. For parents and teachers who want to
facilitate the development of their children’s/students’ interest in science, the principles
best suggested by the study would be as follows.

(1) Let the student sense that you are positively engaged in science yourself.

(2) Share the meaningful and interesting aspects of science with the student, help
him/her to experience them, and be supportive of his/her inquiry.

(3) Convey positive emotions when you do science with the student.

(4) Show the student you care about him/her, like to share your life with him/her,
and see his/her potential at a higher level than s/he sees his/her current self.

Discussion

Limitations of the Studv

As pointed out in the literature review chapter, this study took an individual level
of analysis based on the assumption that whether or how a certain relationship affects an
individual’s development of interest in science mainly depends on how this individual
makes sense of that relationship and comes to shape his/her interest in the context of that
relationship. Based on this assumption, the design of the study allowed the participants
to talk about how they perceived their interest-raising and/or interest-lowing relationships
with others. While analyzing the data, I chose to treat each relationship as a unit of
analysis. When one participant had more than one inﬂuential relationship, these
relationships were treated separately as individual episodes. Common characteristics

were sought among all these interest-raising relationships or interest-lowering

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relationships. This way of analysis posed a constraint in what could be seen from the
data. It helped me see the effect of each interest-affecting relationship, but it did not
allow me to detect the possible accumulative effect through multiple relationships.
Another potential limitation to consider is whether students who were interested
in science tended to report stories about positive experiences (including interest-raising
relationships), and students who were uninterested in science tended to report stories
about negative experiences (including interest-lowering relationships) due to the tendency
of people to construct stories which are consistent with their current identify (e.g.,
Hopper, 1993; LaRossa, 1995; Orbuch, 1993, 1997; Stemberg, 1995). Although this
possibility should be kept in mind, I believe that this concern was not serious in this study
for two reasons. First, inaccuracy of self reporting is likely to occur in two situations: (I)
when there is a strong social expectation which speciﬁes the right thing to say, (2) when
the researcher is asking people about something they really do not know much about, so
they have to make up responses that sound sensible. With regard to social expectations,
the very fact that I was soliciting people who were either interested or uninterested in
science should have suggested to the participants that it was okay to be uninterested in
science. I also assured each participant before the interview that there were not certain
accurate responses that I was looking for. Since this study was about their own interest in
science, an area of study which they should have had at least several years of experience
of, the concern for lack of knowledge should not be serious here. Second, the data
revealed that many students in the uninterested group actually reported interest-raising
experiences and relationships that were not expected from the guiding hypothesis. This
lowered the concern that students who were uninterested in science would only talk about
negative experiences due to their intention to report experiences that were consistent with

their current interest level.

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Several factors besides inﬂuential relationships may constitute alternative
explanations for the students’ different levels of interest in science observed in this study:
self selection for participating in the study, ability in learning science, prior achievement
in science, and the ability to reﬂect on their experience. If this study had taken a
quantitative approach, these factors could have been treated as potential confounding
variables. Since a qualitative approach was taken, and these factors were not addressed
directly in the study, we need to keep in mind that all these factors might have inﬂuenced
the ﬁndings in ways that we do not know. Speculations about the possible inﬂuence of
each of these factors will be discussed.

The fact that potential participants knew that I was soliciting students who were
either interested or uninterested in science might have inﬂuenced who chose to participate
in the study. Yet we do not know in what ways the inﬂuence worked. One might suspect
that this project could have been more attractive to people who were interested in science,
since the project was in fact about science. The strongly uninterested students might not
be interested in participating because they were simply not interested in anything related
to science. This might be the reason why the uninterested group in this study still
contained students who actually were interested in science in various contexts. In other
words, there might be another group of students out there who were completely
uninterested in science. Since they did not choose to participate, they were not
represented in this study. However, one might also suspect that the project could have
been attractive to students who were either strongly interested or strongly uninterested in
science more than to students who were neutral in their feeling about science, because it
should have been easier for the former to identify themselves with the characteristics
asked for the study. It was also possible for the strongly uninterested students to be
interested in an opportunity which might allow them to express their frustrations and

complaints about science.

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It seems reasonable to speculate that the students who developed a higher interest
in science might be the ones who had a better ability of learning science, and/or the ones
who had a higher achievement in science. Since this study did not assess the participants’
ability to learn science, nor their prior achievement in science, it is hard to untangle the
contribution of inﬂuential interpersonal relationships to their development of interest in
science from the contribution of their learning ability and prior achievement. Future
studies can use a design which matches students with the same learning ability and/or
prior achievement in order to examine the contribution of inﬂuential interpersonal
relationships independent of the other two factors.

One distinction needs to be made here about the discussion of learning ability and
prior achievement. That is the distinction between what really was the case versus what
the students perceived to be the case. Suppose a factor has inﬂuenced a student’s
development of interest in science. It does not necessarily mean that the student would
perceive it as important in his development of interest in science. The above discussion
about the alternative explanations and the future design that tried to control these
alternative factors tend to put more emphasis on what really was the case. This study,
nevertheless, had its emphasis on what the students perceived to be the case.

Another uncontrolled factor in this study was people’s ability to reﬂect on their
experiences and to perceive causal links. Even though the focus of this study was on
perceptions, some people might perceive things more accurately than others. It is also
possible that people do not perceive the signiﬁcance of a certain experience until later.
Since these factors were not controlled or tested in this study, they become factors we

have to be aware of while interpreting the results.

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Integpersonal Relationships and the Development of Domain-speciﬁc Interest

This study provides support that positive interpersonal relationships do facilitate
the development of interest in science. The approach used in this study allows the
researcher to see the qualities and effects of interpersonal relationships that are of
importance to students in their own thinking. Considering the ﬁndings from this
approach in the light of other studies investigating the relation between interpersonal
relationships and various motivational outcomes will help us better understand the
affecting power of interpersonal relationships on the development of domain-speciﬁc
interest. Midgley and her colleagues have found that when students moved from
elementary teachers they perceived to be low in support to junior high teachers they
perceived to be high in support, the intrinsic value of math was enhanced, while students
who moved from teachers they perceived to be high in support to teachers they perceived
to be low in support experienced a sharp decline in both the intrinsic value and perceived
usefulness and importance of math (Midgley, F eldlaufer, & Eccles, 1989). Goodenow
(1993) has reported that student-perceived teacher support explained over one third of
students’ assessment of the interest, importance, and value of the academic work of that
class. These ﬁndings have pointed out an association between teacher-student
relationship and student interest in a related domain within a relatively short period of
time. The present study, taking a retrospective approach, further strengthens the assertion
that from the students’ perspective, interpersonal relationship is an inﬂuential factor for
the development of relatively long-term domain-speciﬁc interests. As pointed out by
Goodenow (1993) and Wentzel (1997)), most effort of motivation research focuses on
variables that describe the psychological functioning of a student, such as goal
orientations (e.g., Ames, 1992; Dweck & Leggett, 1988), beliefs about ability (e.g.,
Bandura, 1986, Schunk, 1989), and beliefs about control (e.g., Stipek & Weisz, 1981;

Weiner, 1992), and relatively objective aspects of teaching and instruction, such as

126

reward structures (Ames & Ames, 1984), and classroom organization (e.g., Rosenholtz &
Wilson, 1980). The results of the present study support Wentzel’s and Goodenow’s
insight that models of motivation based on psychological or instructional variables should
be extended to include the students’ perceptions of relationships with others.

Some qualities of inﬂuential relationships identiﬁed in this study are similar to the
qualities found to be associated with outstanding science teachers in previous studies.
The positive relation between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and science, the ways the inﬂuential
ﬁgure mediated the relation between the student and science, as well as the ways the
inﬂuential ﬁgure conveyed and created positive emotions about science identiﬁed in this
study are similar to the ﬁndings by Vargas-gomez and Yager (1987) when they studied
student attitudes concerning their science teachers in exemplary programs, and to the
ﬁndings by Van Sickle and Spector (1996) when they studied science teachers who were
particularly caring. With regard to students’ attitudes toward their science teachers,
Vargas-gomez and Yager found signiﬁcantly more positive attitudes of students from the
exemplary programs compared with students from randomly selected teachers in the
following ways: (1) pleasure with student questions; (2) desire for students to explore
their own ideas; (3) liking of science, and (4) ability and knowledge of it to make science
study exciting. Van Sickle and Spector described how science teachers who were
perceived to be caring built three kinds of relationships in their classrooms (teacher-
student, student-student, teacher-content), and how the interaction and integration of
these three kinds of relationships result in teacher-student-content relationships. These
similarities suggest that interest-raising inﬂuential ﬁgures studied in the present study
probably correspond to teachers whom people identiﬁed as outstanding and caring. The
contribution of this study lies in the careful examination of the relation between the

perceived inﬂuential ﬁgure-student relationship and the development of student interest

127

in science, a relation which was not addressed by the previous studies when they
investigated the outstanding and/or caring science teachers’ characteristics.

Given the assertion that positive interpersonal relationships facilitate the
development of student interest in science, one observation in this study remains
puzzling: many students who had some interest-raising experiences/relationships in
science ended up calling themselves “uninterested in science.” This makes one ask
whether these interest-raising experiences/relationships are really important for their
development of interest in science or not. I think two issues need to be addressed when
we consider this question. First, the dualistic conceptualization of people as being either
interested or uninterested in science needs to be re-considered. This dissertation project
started with such a dualistic conceptualization, which led to the design of four groups
(male interested, male uninterested, female interested, female uninterested) used in the
study. Yet the ﬁndings of the study have revealed that interest in science is a much richer
construct than what can be captured in this dualistic view. Many people who belonged to
the uninterested group were actually quite interested in some areas of science in some
contexts. In other words, even though one person belongs to the uninterested group in
general, it does not necessarily mean that his interest in science is non-existent. As
directly mentioned by some participants, their current existing interest, even though it
might not be as strong or as broad as that of someone else who is strongly interested in
science, comes as a result of early interest-raising experiences/relationships. Therefore,
the fact that many people who had interest-raising relationships ended up in the
uninterested group does not necessarily mean that these relationships are not important.
Quite the opposite, I tend to believe that without them, these people’s current interest
would have been even lower than what was reported in the study. This being said, it

would still be interesting to further understand the reasons why these people with interest-

128

raising experiences/relationships did not develop an interest in science which was
stronger than their current one.

Two things were noticed from the data. First, some students said that they
thought their particularly good interest-raising experience with a particular inﬂuential
ﬁgure might be just an exceptional experience. They believed most other science
courses/teachers would be dry and hard. In other words, one or a few interest-raising
experiences/relationships might not be enough when the overall image about science and
people in science stayed interest-lowering. It would be sensible to pursue a future study
that aims at assessing not only the student’s interest-raising experiences and interest-
lowering experiences as separate events, but also the student’s overall schema about the
interaction of science, people in science, and the student’s perception of him/herself in
regard to science. Second, the data revealed that there were actually three kinds of
development of interest in science: (1) Some people developed a strong interest in science
due to interest-raising experiences. (2) Some people developed a low interest in science
accompanied by a negative feeling toward science due to interest-lowering experiences.
(3) Some people were simply never “turned on” to science, but did not develop a
particularly negative feeling toward science either. The third kind of people were usually
“turned on” to something else, and thus directed their time and effort toward that. A
future study can further understand the experiences of people who were simply never
“turned on” to science. Do they have experiences similar to what other people think of as
interest-raising experiences? If yes, why did those experiences not turn them on? If they
were simply turned on toward other domains but not science, what are the mechanisms
that accounted for the development of interest in those domains? Do these mechanisms
share similarities to what we found in the development of interest in science with people

who are interested in science?

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Motivational Zone of Proximal Development (MZPD)
As pointed out by Brophy (1998), there have been remarkable developments in

theory and research on motivation in education, but we currently know much more about
motivation in its expectancy aspects than its value/interest/appreciation aspects. We
know how a person’s sense of efﬁcacy or expectations for success connect with related
causal attributions for success and failure, emphasis on learning vs. performance goals,
selection of strategies for accomplishing the task and managing failure and frustration,
and so on. However, we know much less about how one’s value/interest/appreciation for
a particular domain gets developed.

To promote research in this direction, Brophy outlined some principles that might
emerge as components in a model that addresses the value aspects of motivation in
education. One of the two major principles outlined by Brophy is the idea of a
“motivational zone of proximal development (MZPD).” Sociocultural educational
models state that mediation by a more capable other can make a task that lies within the
zone of proximal development appropriate as a context for mentor-guided learning, when
the task might have been too difﬁcult as a context for self-guided learning (Vygotsky,
1978). Brophy argued that we also need a motivational analog of the “zone of proximal
development” concept to incorporate the idea that classroom teachers or other mentors
can help learners begin to see the value in potential learning opportunities that they have
not yet come to appreciate (and might never come to appreciate) on their own. This
concept is particularly important for the development of value/interest/appreciation for an
academic domain because academic learning often involves abstract concepts which are
away from basic skills and obvious connections to the student’s daily life. Brophy argued
that in many cases, intrinsically motivated learning may not become possible for most
students unless teachers help these students begin to appreciate the potential value in the

domain and begin to explore it in ways that enable them to experience its satisfactions.

130

 

Based on Brophy’s idea of a motivational zone of proximate development, we can
say that if a leamer’s interest in science increased because of his engagement in a certain
activity with a certain person(s), something must have worked in the learner’s
motivational zone of proximal development to promote his interest. The question
becomes: What is the nature of that something? It would be good to take a detailed look
at what happened in that motivational zone of proximal development. This study, in a
sense, constitutes an empirical effort to examine what happened between the more
capable other and the learner as they were engaged in science-related activities within the
learner’s motivational zone of proximal development. The design of this study allowed
the participants a large amount of freedom to describe in their own ways what happened
between the inﬂuential ﬁgure and themselves. The patterns reported in the ﬁndings
mainly emerged from the data, rather than from a previously existing theoretical
framework. Therefore, the patterns in the ﬁndings indicate what was important in the
students’ mind when they thought about their relationships with the inﬂuential ﬁgures.
Due to the particular nature of this study, it provides empirical evidence to help us
examine whether certain components suggested in the MZPD are actually important in
the students’ thinking.

Now let us consider the components of MZPD proposed by Brophy. Eccles and
Wigﬁeld (1985) suggested that subjective task value has three major components: (1)
attainment value (the importance of attaining success on the task in order to afﬁrm our
self-concept or fulﬁll our needs for achievement, power, or prestige); (2) intrinsic or
interest value (the enjoyment that we get from engaging in the task); and (3) utility value
(the role that engaging in the task may play in advancing our career or helping us reach
other larger goals). Building on this conceptualization, Brophy proposed a broadened
version which included experiencing the satisfaction of achieving understanding or

mastering a skill under attainment value, developing aesthetic appreciation of the content

131

or skill under intrinsic value, and gaining awareness of the role of the learning in
improving the quality of one’s life or making one a better person under utility value.
Based on this broadened version of conceptualizing values, Brophy made a theoretical
argument that creating motivationally optimized learning situations requires optimally
mediated learning experiences through modeling, coaching, and scaffolding to enable
students to learn with understanding, appreciation, and life applications.

This study provides supportive evidence to some components in Brophy’s model.
Basically, all participants in the study understood the epistemological nature of science
quite well. There was not a great deal of difference in the understanding between the
interested group and the uninterested group. The data suggested that the students who
were uninterested in science did not become uninterested because they did not understand
what science is supposed to be about, but because they found it hard to learn science with
understanding (as indicated in Tables 1, 3, and 6).

Some evidence about the emotions the inﬂuential ﬁgure conveyed to the student
or created in the student can be viewed as indirect evidence that reﬂects the sense of
appreciation. Ten out of the twenty-seven positive inﬂuential ﬁgures were felt by the
students as “being enthusiastic about helping the students learn.” The sense of
amazement or wonder was mentioned in episodes with six interest-raising inﬂuential
ﬁgures. In other words, quite a few participants mentioned how the inﬂuential ﬁgures
helped them to experience an aesthetic appreciation of science.

The issue of life application was salient from the data. In summary, the majority
of the students in the interested group viewed science as highly related to their life and
people’s lives in general; the majority of students in the uninterested group viewed
science as something that can be related to life sometimes, but often is not. This forms

strong supportive evidence for the application component in Brophy’s model.

132

 

As for the idea about modeling, coaching, and scaffolding, unfortunately, this
study did not provide enough evidence for these components. Due to the limitations of
human memory, especially in regard to detail, I think a retrospective interview would not
be the best way to acquire information about these three components. A detailed
understanding of the existence and nature of these three components requires
observational research, which conducts observations of an on-going interaction between a
teacher and his/her student(s), in order to unfold how a teacher models, coaches, and
scaffolds the ways to experience understanding, appreciation, and life application of

science.

Future Directions
This study provides information to help us understand the ways in which students
perceive interest-raising relationships. The ﬁndings indicate several components which
are important in these relationships. Yet in a broader context, we know that many
students are not interested in science. Therefore, I would like to propose the following
questions for future studies:
(1) In what ways are the interest-raising components mentioned in this study present in
teacher-student relationships in science classrooms?
(2) Are these interest-raising components present in science teachers’ beliefs about the
development of student interest in science?
(3) Are there other components in science teachers’ beliefs about the development of
student interest in science? If yes, what are they?
(4) Are these interest-raising components present in science teachers’ practice when they
interact with their students? When the answer is “yes” for certain teachers, do we see

an increase in their students’ interest in science? When the answer is “no” for certain

133

teachers, do we see a decrease in their students’ interest in science? What are the
reasons to account for the absence of these components?

(5) We seem to know that not all students of a teacher with optimal interest-raising
characteristics would become strongly interested in science. What are the reasons to
account for the individual differences in students’ response to the optimal interest-

raising characteristics?

Final Note

This study has deepened my understanding of the nature of student interest in
science, and the relation between its development and various characteristics of
interpersonal relationships between the student and the inﬂuential ﬁgures. The insights
developed from the ﬁndings provide parents and teachers certain principles to follow, as
well as a tentative theory to conﬁrm and/or scrutinize, in their effort to understand and
facilitate the development of student interest in science. Ideas for future research have
also been generated from reﬂecting on the ﬁndings and related theoretical and empirical
work. Thus, this piece of research not only adds to our present knowledge, but also will

lead to a further line of meaningful inquiry.

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Opening:

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APPENDIX

Interview Protocol

Thank you for coming to talk to me about your experience and interest in
science. In our interview, I will be interested in understanding your
experiences and your ideas. There is not a certain outcome that is the
“right response.” Some of the questions that I ask you might be easy, and
some might need a little bit more thinking to respond to. Please do try and
be patient with me. In order to understand your thinking better, I might be
asking you questions such as “Can you tell me more about it?” or “Can
you give me an example?” or “What do you mean by saying ...?” Please
feel free to say anything or ask any questions when something is not clear.
If it is okay with you, I will tape record our talk. The tape will help me to
understand your ideas better because I can go back and listen to it. Our
talk will be kept completely conﬁdential.

When you think about science, what comes to your mind?
What kind of things do you think people do when they are doing science?
What do you do when you do science?

If a student from another country became your classmate, and s/he said to
you, “I have never had science in my country. What is science?” how
would you respond to him/her?

Would you please tell me some of your major experiences with science?
Would you please tell me how you feel about science?

In general, are you interested in science?

To what extent would you say you are interested in science (e.g., strongly
interested, pretty interested, neutral, not very interested, not interested at
all)?

Can you give me a few examples of the kinds of things you would do (or
avoid doing) because of your interest in science (or your lack of interest in
science)?

Would you please tell me how your interest in science plays out in your
daily life? For example, one person might spend 5% of his time pursuing
his interest in science by watching science programs on TV; another
person might spend 80% of his time pursuing his interest in science by
studying as a science major.

Why are you interested (or not interested ) in science?
When I think of science, I tend to think that there are four kinds of science
activities that make me feel quite differently: (1) learning science facts and

concepts in school (e. g., listening to lectures or reading textbooks about
biological evolution, chemical equilibrium, force and motion, etc.), (2)

135

 

 

Probe:
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Probe:
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Probe:

Probe:

Probe:
Probe:
Probe:
Probe:

If yes...
Probe:

learning science facts and concepts outside of school (e.g., reading science
magazines or watching TV programs for new knowledge about cancers,
polymers, outer space, animals and plants, etc.), (3) trying to ﬁgure out
scientiﬁc knowledge in school (e.g., doing experiments, having
discussions in school about science topics, etc.), and (4) trying to ﬁgure
out scientiﬁc knowledge outside of school (e.g., trying to understand the
process of baking by varying temperature or ingredients and analyzing the
results, trying to understand the function of a device such as a car, a watch,
or a sewing machine by manipulating it in various ways, participating in
discussion about science topics with friends or family members, etc.).
Would you please think about each of these four areas and tell me your
interest level for each of them?

Can you give me one or two examples?

Why are you interested in that area?

Why are the interest levels different?

How did your interest in science start? (or Why did you never develop an
interest in science? or How did your “uninterest” start?)

If you draw a curve to represent the development of your interest in
science with time/age as the horizontal axis and the interest level in
science as the vertical axis, what would your curve look like?

Can you talk about the curve?

Why was your interest high (or low) at that time?

Why did it go up (or down) at that time?

Is there anything in your life that has affected your interest in science?
How did that something affect you?

Can you tell me a little more about the change of your interest in science
as a result of experiencing that something? What did your interest in
science look like before that experience? What did your interest in science
look like after that experience?

Is there any person in your life who has affected your interest in science?
Can you tell me a little more about the change of your interest in science
as a result of interacting with that person? What did your interest in
science look like before that experience? What did your interest in science
look like after that experience?

What did that person do to make you interested in science? or What did
that person do to lower your interest in science? Can you give me an
example?

How would you describe your interaction with your (father, mother,
teacher, or ...)? Can you give me an example?

How would you describe your relationship with your (father, mother,
teacher, or...)?

Can you come up with some adjectives to describe your relationship with
your (father, mother, teacher, or...)?

Do you think that your relationship with your (father, mother, teacher,
or...) has anything to do with your interest in science?

How?

136

Probe: In terms of affecting your interest in science, how important is your
relationship with your (father, mother, teacher, or...) compared with other
factors that might also have an inﬂuence?

If the student is interested in science and has had (an) inﬂuential ﬁgure(s) who affected
his/her interest in science...

Question: Does this person have interests other than science that you know about?
Have you developed interests similar to his/her other interests?
Probe: How? or Why not?

If the student is uninterested in science...

Question: Would you please tell me about something that interests you a lot?
Question: How did your interest in _ start?

Question: Why is it that __ makes you interested but science doesn’t?
Question: Is there anything or anyone in your life that has affected your interest in
Probe: How—did that affect your interest in _?

Question: Do you know someone who is quite interested in science, e.g., a family

member, a teacher, a friend, etc.?
Question: Why didn’t that person’s interest ever inﬂuence your interest in science?

Question: How good do you think you are in science? How good do you think you
are in each of the four areas?

137

 

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Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goal, structures, and student motivation. Journal of
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Ames, D., & Ames, R. (1984). Systems of student and teacher motivation: Toward a
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