THE ASTROBIOLOGY PROJECT: EFFECTS ON STUDENTS’ SCIENCE ASPIRATIONS AND ACHIEVEMENT, AND AN ANALYSIS OF SELF-HANDICAPPING BEHAVIOR

THE ASTROBIOLOGY PROJECT: EFFECTS ON STUDENTS’ SCIENCE ASPIRATIONS AND ACHIEVEMENT, AND AN ANALYSIS OF
SELF-HANDICAPPING BEHAVIOR

By Elizabeth Burroughs

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Susan McKay

A Lay Abstract of the Thesis Presented
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Science in Teaching
May, 2012

A reformed science curriculum for middle school and high school students was piloted in Maine in 2008-2009 as part of a state initiative to increase student interest and performance in STEM fields. Astrobiology, An Integrated Science Approach, developed by TERC and published by It’s About Time Publishers, is a year-long interdisciplinary curriculum designed to engage students in science by offering a series of inquiry-based activities with the theme of how we search for life in the universe.
The astrobiology pilot study was conducted by the University of Maine and the Maine Department of Education, involving ten teachers and 274 students from eight Maine middle and high schools. Students took pretest and posttest science content and science attitude surveys.
The first set of goals of this thesis was to determine whether the astrobiology curriculum was more or less effective than traditional science courses for Maine students, both in terms of science learning and attitudes about science. The second set of goals involved an unexpected result that was found when analyzing the short-answer questions on the content surveys. A large number of students provided responses that were not serious answers to the questions. This “self-handicapping” behavior can indicate problems with students’ learning motivations. Using the astrobiology data, this research compared the prevalence of self-handicapping between eighth and ninth grade students and between sexes, and whether self-handicapping behavior was correlated with students’ self-efficacy.
Statistical analyses revealed no significant differences in content learning between astrobiology and control students. There were also no significant differences in science attitudes between the two groups.
The analysis of self-handicapping by grade revealed some interesting trends. On the pretest, ninth grade students exhibited self-handicapping behavior significantly more frequently than eighth grade students. On the posttest, however, eighth grade students had increased their level of self-handicapping, ninth graders had decreased, and the resulting frequencies were nearly identical. These data suggest that, although ninth grade is a year in which teachers can expect to see high levels of performance learning goals and resulting negative behaviors, this period is relatively short-lived. By the end of the ninth grade year, this study suggests that performance-avoid behaviors are decreasing.