Designing, measuring and modelling the impact of the hands-on particle physics learning laboratory S'Cool LAB at CERN Effects of student and laboratory characteristics on high-school students’ cognitive and affective outcomes

Although many students find science important, science subjects are among the least favourite school subjects, student numbers declined over the past decades, and women are still strongly underrepresented in science. In particular, students’ decreasing enjoyment of and interest in school science, their low science-related self-beliefs, their stereotypic images of science and scientists, and thus, their low interest in science and technology careers are worrying. However, today’s students will need scientific literacy and scientific reasoning skills to face the challenges of the 21st century, such as the revolution of job markets due to machine learning and robotics. To counteract this troubling trend, researchers call for a) more practical work, b) science learning that is relevant for students and takes their interest into account, c) activities fostering students’ self-beliefs in science, in particular for female students, and d) more contact with scientists. Here, out-of-school learning opportunities are ideal complements to formal science education. In particular, out-of-school learning laboratories for high-school students hold a unique position within the informal learning sector because they provide hands-on activities, often guided by scientists, intended to foster students’ interest in science. Furthermore, these labs provide authentic learning environments, which are often related to modern science topics, and research equipment that is usually not available in schools. Whereas participation in hands-on workshops in these laboratories has an immense potential to foster both students' affects towards science and their knowledge and understanding, previous studies indicated that the high amount of novelty in these unique settings is not entirely beneficial. In particular, high levels of novelty can hinder learning. Here, student characteristics, such as their prior interest and experiences, and students’ perceptions of characteristics of out-of-school learning labs, such as the organisation, cognitive load or support by volunteering scientists, are expected to influence the educational effectiveness of hands-on sessions in these settings. Hence, it is crucial to assess these novelty factors together with the desired educational outcomes of the learning activities to coherently understand the ‘mechanism of action’ of out-of-school learning labs and thereby optimise their educational potential. In the framework of this PhD project, S’Cool LAB, a new out-of-school hands-on learning laboratory for high-school students was developed at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Particle physics learning activities were designed to help students understand the physics and technologies of the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, while also fostering their interest in physics, self-beliefs and scientific curiosity. To maximise the educational potential of this unique opportunity at CERN, the development of learning activities was based on documented students’ conceptions and took recent research results about interest, curiosity, cognitive activation and cognitive load into account. To analyse the educational effectiveness of half-day hands-on sessions in S’Cool LAB, and to understand the relevance of student and laboratory characteristics, more than 500 students from 15 different countries took part in a quantitative study employing a single group, pre- and post-test research design. In particular, different types of novelty factors were assessed and used to model S’Cool LAB’s educational outcomes in both single-level and multi-level linear models. The results of the S’Cool LAB evaluation study confirmed high educational effectiveness of its hands-on sessions. Despite the very short intervention time of only 4.5 hours, participation in a half-day hands-on session in S’Cool LAB led to medium-sized effects on students’ physics interest (d=0.6) and their conceptual understanding (d=0.7), as well as a small effect on students’ physics self-beliefs (d=0.4). Here, girls benefited more from the hands-on sessions in S’Cool LAB with respect to physics interest (d=0.8) and self-beliefs (d=0.5) than did boys (d=0.5 & 0.3). Consequently, the initial gender gap with girls reporting slightly lower dispositional physics interest (d=0.3) and physics self-beliefs (d=0.4) was closed with respect to their situational interest and self-beliefs. In summary, S’Cool LAB outperforms other hands-on out-of-school learning labs by triggering very high situational interest and self-beliefs even for students whose dispositional interest and physics self-beliefs were already very high. Furthermore, S’Cool LAB demonstrates that out-of-school learning labs can foster students’ conceptual understanding significantly without compromising the positive impact on other variables, such as interest and self-beliefs. When comparing students’ epistemic curiosity towards particle physics before and after having taken part in hands-on sessions in S’Cool LAB, no significant differences were identified. However, the level of students’ curiosity towards particle physics was already very high in the pre-visit questionnaire. Indeed, when comparing these curiosity levels with other topics, particle physics stands out as an extremely promising topic to both accommodate and maintain exceptionally high levels of epistemic curiosity. Students’ perception of support by the learning environment and by the educators in S’Cool LAB were crucial elements of their novelty experience and were associated with especially high affective outcomes. In particular, students highly appreciated the volunteering CERN scientists and perceived their support as very valuable. Furthermore, students’ perception of their cognitive preparedness and their cognitive load were vital with respect to the cognitive effects of S’Cool LAB. Overall, students’ perception of laboratory characteristics accounted for twice the amount of variance in the educational outcomes than did student characteristics. Although the results of single- and multi-level modelling were similar, ignoring the hierarchical data structure was associated with a substantial overestimation of the effective sample size up to a factor of 11. Indeed, students’ educational outcomes differed significantly among different groups of students because the groups showed major differences, for example, in their dispositional interest and their prior conceptual understanding. In the framework of this PhD project, S’Cool LAB was successfully established as CERN’s physics education research facility and students taking part in hands-on sessions also contributed to expanding our current understanding of students’ conceptions about radiation and radioactivity. Here, the respective research results suggest that students’ conceptual understanding of radiation and radioactivity has not changed much over the past decades. Instead, most of the previously documented conceptions were reproduced within this study. The results of a factor analysis suggest that, on the one hand, students argue rather consistently within certain areas, such as the macroscopic perspective on half-life. On the other hand, the results of a cluster analysis suggest that students’ conceptual understanding of one area is independent of their understanding of a different area. Most strikingly, misconceptions seem to manifest themselves independently of students’ (prior) knowledge. In summary, the results of the students’ conceptions study confirm that it is possible and worthwhile to assess students’ conceptual understanding of radiation and radioactivity quantitatively within the framework of out-of-school learning labs. In summary, the S’Cool LAB studies show that the topic of particle physics provides a promising opportunity to introduce high-school students to modern physics by taking their interest and curiosity into account without compromising their conceptual understanding. Here, the high educational effectiveness of S’Cool LAB as a unique out-of-school learning lab confirms its successful development, more than justifies the required resources, and provides highly promising insights into the mechanism of action of out-of-school learning.