Observable and Unobservable Involvement Behaviours of a Climatology Course’s Undergraduate Students

Journal Title: European Journal of Teaching and Education - Year 2020, Vol 2, Issue 1

Abstract

This study investigated students’ observable and unobservable involvement behaviours and their possible relation with academic achievement in a Climatology course at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, Portugal, in the Fall 2018/19. A structured online questionnaire titled “Observable and Unobservable Student Involvement Behaviours (OUSIB)” featuring a zero-centred 5-point Likert scale was used to collect the data. The OUSIB questionnaire comprised 20 multiple-choice questions, which were divided into two subscales: (1) Observable Involvement Behaviours; (2) Unobservable Involvement Behaviours; it was validated using Cronbach coefficient alpha. The collected data show that unobservable involvement behaviours are more frequent than the observable ones. This may reflect the difficulties that most students face in understanding the course contents, which likely triggers their introspective (unobservable) in detriment of their observable involvement behaviour. We notice that most of the Climatology syllabus consists of new subjects for which students generally have no prior knowledge or experience. It may constitute a great challenge for students being able to provide regular observable feedback during an entire problem-solving class. Moreover, there is a common tendency for high-grade students to prepare the classes in advance and involve less both observably and unobservably in classroom activities. We found no significant correlation between students’ final grades and their replies to the OUSIB questionnaire, which precludes any possible relationship between students’ academic achievement and their involvement behaviours in problem-solving classes.

Authors and Affiliations

T. M. Seixas,M. A. Salgueiro da silva,

Keywords

Related Articles

The Implementation of Tokkatsu as a New Co-inquiry Approach in Egypt-Japan Schools

Egypt-Japan Education Partnership (EJEP) is a partnership for a professional development training program that was established between Egypt and Japan in 2016 towards actualizing the new education system “Education 2.0...

Teaching Radiology Courses: How to Address Learning Needs of Medical Students Through Interacting in Radiology

Radiologists in radiology courses (RC) at teaching and university hospitals train medical students in competent image interpreting and reporting (IIR). Information extracted from imaging is crucial for clinical decisions...

Associations between Parental Conflict and Externalising Behaviours in Children with ASD in a Local Singaporean Sample: Parenting Style as a Moderating Mechanism

The present study examined the associations between parental conflict and externalising behaviours, specifically in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In addition, parenting styles is explored to moderate the...

Project-Based Learning with or Without Multimodal Features: Action-Based Research for Developing and Assessing Intercultural Competence

The present paper proposes a framework for using "Multimodal Creative Projects" (MCP) for developing intercultural competence in engineering students. Instructors added a multimodal feature to improve students' learning...

Using mathematics to known how to teach climate change to pre-service teachers: Is knowledge enough?

Climate Change is one of the greatest challenges for humanity and education plays a fundamental role in raising awareness in society about the importance and need to take adaptation and mitigation measures. Climate Chang...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP743278
  • DOI https://doi.org/10.33422/ejte.v2i1.175
  • Views 15
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

T. M. Seixas, M. A. Salgueiro da silva, (2020). Observable and Unobservable Involvement Behaviours of a Climatology Course’s Undergraduate Students. European Journal of Teaching and Education, 2(1), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-743278