Characteristics of Secondary School Classrooms Associated with Understanding of Nature of Science, Attitudes and Learning Environment

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Characteristics of Secondary School Classrooms Associated with Understanding of Nature
of Science, Attitudes and Learning Environment
Objectives
The purpose of the study was two-fold: the validation of a questionnaire assessing classroom
learning environments, attitudes to science, and understanding of the nature of science among
urban secondary school students; and identification of characteristics of the science classroom
environment that enhance students’ attitudes to science and understanding of nature of science.
The learning environment assessment is based on What Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC); the
attitudes to science, Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA); and the understanding of the
nature of science, Scientific Attitude Inventory: Revised (SAI-II) and Views On Science and
Education Questionnaire (VOSE).
Theoretical Framework
Background
When teachers assess their students and classrooms, they typically only consider achievement
and not factors that might influence their students’ academic success (Fraser, 1989a). Our
research helped to identify associations between the science classroom environment and student
outcomes, therefore providing insight into characteristics that make a successful science
classroom such as improved student attitudes about science and understanding of nature of
science.

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Numerous studies have provided insight into relationships between the science learning
environment and students’ attitudes to science (Fisher & Waldrip, 1999; Osborne, Simon, &
Collins, 2003). However, no previous study has simultaneously examined associations between
scales from the WIHIC (Involvement, Investigation, and Cooperation), TOSRA (Social
Implications of Science, and Normality of Scientists), and SAI-II/VOSE (Tentative Nature of
Science, Empirical Basis of Science, and Scientific Method). In addition, our study involves
senior high school students, while previous studies examined associations between the learning
environment and nature of science with post-secondary, prospective teachers (Abd-El-Khalick,
Bell, & Lederman, 1998; Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Akerson, Abd-El-Khalick, &
Lederman, 2000; Schwartz, 2004; Tsai, 2002).
Field of Learning Environments
The literature on learning environments is abundant and substantial. Fraser completed a thorough
review of the learning environments literature spanning the previous four decades, namely the
1960s to the 1990s and again in the new century (Fraser, 1998a, 2012). There are numerous
studies on the relationship between learning environments and affective outcomes conducted at
the regional (Kim, Fisher, & Fraser, 2000; Koul & Fisher, 2005; Turkmen & Bonnstetter, 1999),
national (Dorman & Ferguson, 2004; Fraser, 1998a, 1998b), and international levels (Dorman &
Ferguson, 2004; Fraser, 1998a, 2012).
Early learning environments research was motivated by the ideas of Lewin (1936) and Murray
(1938), who recognized and identified the existence of a relationship between a person and his or
her environment. School environment instruments were developed as early as 1958, but they are

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awkward and do not have a clear theoretical basis (Moos, 1981). In the 1970s, the work by Moos
(Moos, 1973; 1977) and Walberg (1984) led to research on classroom learning environments.
While Moos’ original work was not about educational settings, it was easily adaptable (Fraser,
2001; Nix, Fraser, & Ledbetter, 2005; Reynolds & Walberg, 1991). Walberg’s work identified
the learning environment as one of nine factors that affect educational productivity (Walberg,
1984).
Historically, classroom environments have been studied in a quantitative way (Fraser, 1998a),
but recent approaches in educational research include interpretive methodologies (Fraser,
1989b). Two fundamental beliefs underpin the interpretive approach. The first is that students, as
members of the classroom, are in a position to provide insights that an outside observer might
not have. Second, students are capable of conveying those insights (Fraser, 1998a, 1998b, 2002).
With the acceptance of these beliefs comes the ability to learn about what is happening in
classrooms by asking the students. Research has shown that, even within the same environment,
there are differences in students’ perceptions based on gender, ethnicity, and abilities (Fraser,
1989b).
Instruments
We used modified versions of existing instruments: the WIHIC to assess the learning
environment; the TOSRA to assess student attitudes; and the SAI-II/VOSE to assess
understanding of nature of science. Although the SAI-II uses the term attitude, it addresses
understanding of nature of science topics such as the tentative nature of science, empirical basis
of science, and scientific method (Ledezma & Gonzalez, 2006).

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To ease the stress on students, we modified four established instruments and combined them into
one – What Is Happening In this Classroom (WIHIC), Test of Science Related Attitudes
(TOSRA), and Scientific Attitudes Inventory Revision (SAI-II) and Views on Science and
Education Questionnaire (VOSE). Four scales were chosen from the WIHIC (learning
environment), two scales were chosen from the TOSRA (attitude to science), and two were
chosen from the SAI-II and VOSE (understanding of nature of science).
The WIHIC, TOSRA, SAI-II, and VOSE use a five-point response scale, with WIHIC using a
frequency scale (Almost Always, Often, Sometimes, Seldom, and Almost Never), and TOSRA
and SAI-II and VOSE using a Likert scale (Strongly Agree, Agree, Not sure, Disagree, and
Strongly Disagree). The response scale for the WIHIC was modified to match the same scale as
the TOSRA, SAI-II, and VOSE (Strongly Agree, Agree, Not sure, Disagree, and Strongly
Disagree) was used.
Learning Environment Instrument
The WIHIC questionnaire has 56 items in seven scales: Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support,
Involvement, Investigation, Cooperation, Task Orientation, and Equity (Aldridge & Fraser,
2000). The WIHIC has been used extensively in past research in numerous countries as reflected
in the 21 studies tabulated and reviewed by Fraser (2012). In an unusually comprehensive
validation of the WIHIC, Dorman (2003) involved a sample of 3980 high-school students from
Australia, the UK, and Canada. For our study, we chose the WIHIC scales of Involvement,
Investigation, Cooperation, and Task Orientation as being most salient for our research.

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Attitude Instrument
The TOSRA measures seven distinct science-related attitudes among secondary school students
(Fraser, 1981). There are 70 items in seven scales in the original version of the TOSRA: Social
Implications for Science, Normality of Scientists, Attitude to Scientific Inquiry, Adoption of
Scientific Attitudes, Enjoyment of Science Lessons, Leisure Interest in Science, and Career
Interest in Science. The TOSRA has been field tested and validated in science classes in
Australia (Fraser, 1981), Singapore (Wong & Fraser, 1996), and Indonesia (Fraser, Aldridge, &
Adolphe, 2010), as well as being modified and validated for other school subjects including
mathematics (Ogbuehi & Fraser, 2007), geography (Walker, 2006), and Spanish (Adamski,
Fraser, & Peiro, 2013). For our research, we chose the Social Implications for Science and
Normality of Scientists scales.
Nature of Science Instrument
Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) was developed in response to a need for a single instrument
to assess scientific attitude for the high school level (Moore & Sutman, 1970). The six attitude
statements are Tentative Nature of Science, Empirical Basis of Science, Scientific Method,
Science as an Idea-Generating Activity, Necessity for Public Support of Science, and Personal
Attributes Necessary for a Career in Science. The SAI-II is a revised version of the original SAI
in response to criticism about gender bias and readability (Moore & Foy, 1997). The inventory
has been identified as the most well-known and used instrument to measure student attitudes
about science (Munby, 1997; Osborne et al., 2003).

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While the instrument is called the Scientific Attitude Inventory II, the statements of the inventory
are consistent with Lederman’s conception of understanding of nature of science:
Although the “nature of science” has been defined in numerous ways, it most commonly
refers to the values and assumptions inherent to the development of scientific knowledge
(Lederman & Zeidler, 1987). For example, an individual’s beliefs concerning whether or
not scientific knowledge is amoral, tentative, empirically based, a product of human
creativity, or parsimonious reflect that individual’s conception of the nature of science.
(Lederman, 1992)
The SAI-II has been found to be reliable when used with middle school students in Turkey (as
cited in Demirbaş, 2009) , Thailand (Cojorn, Koocharoenpisal, Haemaprasith, & Siripankaew,
2013) and the USA (Sorge, Newsom, & Hagerty, 2000), science teachers and pre-service
teachers in Turkey (Cavas, Ozdem, Cavas, Cakiroglu, & Ertepinar, 2013; Demirbaş, 2009), India
(Lahiri, 2011), and the USA (Nadelson & Sinatra, 2010), as well as university students in the
USA (Nadelson & Viskupic, 2010). For our study, we chose the Tentative Nature of Science,
Empirical Basis of Science, and Scientific Method scales.
The VOSE was developed in response to a need for an instrument that addressed the difficulty of
NOS instruments that became difficult to administer to large samples. The VOSE contains 15
questions followed by several items representing various philosophical positions, totaling 85
statements (Chen, 2006b). There are 10 questions addressing seven aspects of NOS and five
questions covering the teaching attitudes corresponding to five of the NOS aspects. The seven
aspects are Tentativeness of Scientific Knowledge; Nature of Observation; Scientific Methods;
Hypotheses, Laws, and Theories; Imagination; Validation of Scientific Knowledge; and
Objectivity and Subjectivity in Science. The five teaching attitudes correspond to the five nature

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of science topics of Tentativeness of Scientific Knowledge; Nature of Observation; Scientific
Methods; Hypotheses, Laws, and Theories; and Objectivity and Subjectivity in Science.
The VOSE was found to be reliable when used with junior and senior students in Taiwan (Chen,
2006a; Lai, 2012), secondary science teachers in rural United States (Burton, 2013), secondary
biology students in the Midwest USA (Smith, 2010), and pre-service science teachers in West
Bengal India (Mukhopadhyay, 2013). For our study, we chose the Tentativeness of Scientific
Knowledge, Nature of Observation, and Scientific Methods scales.
Research Methods
Pilot Study
A small sample of students in their third or fourth years of secondary science (Grades 11 and 12)
were involved in a pilot study to check the readability and comprehensibility of the instructions
and items in the WIHIC, TOSRA, and SAI-II/VOSE questionnaires. The selection of
approximately 30 students by grade level and school science experience was designed to
minimize differences in age and science experience.
Participants
All participants attended the same high school that is classified as a Title I school that has been
on the Academic Watch list since 2006. The school’s demographics are typical of neighbourhood
urban schools in the USA (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The 246 science students were in grades
10, 11, and 12.

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None of the participants were administered the questionnaire in their science class, or by a
teacher with any control over their science grade. Students were guaranteed the surveys would
not be shared with their science teacher.
Data Analysis & Interpretation
Validation of the WIHIC, TOSRA, and SAI-II/VOSE
Data collected from administering the questionnaires to our sample of 246 students were
analysed by performing principal axis factor analysis with varimax rotation and Kaiser
normalization separately for: the 32 WIHIC learning environment items in four scales
(Involvement, Investigation, Cooperation and Task Orientation); the 12 TOSRA attitude items in
two scales (Social Implications of Science and Normality of Scientists); and the 18 SAI-II/VOSE
nature of science items in three scales (Tentative Nature of Science, Empirical Basis of Science,
and Scientific Method). The two criteria for the retention of any item were that it must have a
factor loading of at least 0.40 with its own scale and less than 0.40 with all other scales.
With the goal of reducing the number of factors while maintaining important data, it was found
to be useful to modify the existing instruments. A slightly-modified 31-item version of the
WIHIC in the original four scales, but with Item 4 omitted from the Task Orientation scale
(Table 1) was found to provide an optimal factor structure.

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TABLE 1 Factor Analysis Results for WIHIC Scales
Item No Factor Loadings
Involvement Investigation Cooperation Task Orientation
Invol 1 0.69
Invol 2 0.70
Invol 3 0.55
Invol 4 0.66
Invol 5 0.48
Invol 6 0.49
Invol 7 0.44
Invol 8 0.59
Invest1 0.67
Invest 2 0.42
Invest 3 0.59
Invest 4 0.41
Invest 5 0.69
Invest 6 0.71
Invest 7 0.67
Invest 8 0.62
Coop1 0.69
Coop 2 0.54
Coop 3 0.65
Coop 4 0.62
Coop 5 0.57
Coop 6 0.77
Coop 7 0.79
Coop 8 0.62
Task Orien 1 0.62
Task Orien 2 0.66
Task Orien 3 0.57
Task Orien 5 0.64
Task Orien 6 0.66
Task Orien 7 0.57
Task Orien 8 0.66
% Variance 9.91 6.72 29.41 6.08
Eigenvalue 3.17 2.15 9.41 1.95
N=246
Factor loadings less than 0.40 have been omitted from the table.
Principal axis factoring with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization.
Item 4 in the Task Orientation scale was omitted.
The original 12-item version of the TOSRA with two scales (Table 2) was found to provide an
optimal factor structure. All items satisfied the two criteria for retention. A modified 11-item
version of the SAI-II/VOSE with the original Empirical Basis of Science scale removed entirely
and with Item 6 removed from the Scientific Method scale (Table 3) was found to provide an
optimal factor structure.

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TABLE 2 Factor Analysis Results for TOSRA Scales
Social Implications of Science Normality of scientists
Social Implications 1 0.55
Normality 1 0.51
Normality 2 0.75
Normality 3 0.68
Normality 4 0.66
Normality 5 0.51
Normality 6 0.59
% Variance 13.29 38.04
Eigenvalue 1.59 4.56
N=246
TABLE 3 Factor Analysis Results for SAI-II/VOSE Scale
Tentative Nature Of Science Scientific Methods
Tentative Nature 1 0.64
Scientific Method 1 0.52
% Variance 32.78 13.00
Eigenvalue 3.61 1.43
N=246
Item 6 in the Scientific Method scale and the entire Empirical Basis of Science scale were omitted.
The bottom of Tables 1 to 3 shows the percentage of variance and eigenvalue for each scale in
the refined versions of the WIHIC, TOSRA and SAI-II/VOSE. The four scales of the WIHIC
accounted from between 6.08% and 29.41% of the variance (total of 52.12%) and had
eigenvalues ranging from 1.95 to 9.41 (Table 1). The two scales of the TOSRA accounted for
13.29% and 38.04% of the variance (total of 51.33%) and had eigenvalues of 1.59 and 4.56

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(Table 2). The two scales of the SAI-II/VOSE accounted for 13.00% and 32.78% of the variance
(total of 45.78%) and had eigenvalues of 1.43 and 3.61 (Table 3).
Associations between Learning Environment and Student Outcomes
Associations between students’ perceptions of the classroom environment (as assessed by four
WIHIC scales), their attitudes toward science (the two TOSRA scales), and their understanding
of nature of science (two SAI- II scales) are reported in Table 4. The statistics reported in Table
4 are the simple correlation and multiple correlation between each of the TOSRA or SAI-II
scales and the four learning environment scales of the WIHIC.
TABLE 4 Simple Correlations and Multiple Regression Analyses for Associations Between Learning
Environment Scales and Student Outcomes of Attitudes to Science and Nature of Science
Scale
Social
Implications of
Science
Normality of
Scientists
Tentative Nature
of Science
Scientific
Method
r β r β r β r β
Involvement 0.35** 0.00 0.30** 0.11 0.21** 0.12 0.23** 0.05
Investigation 0.49** 0.36** 0.27** 0.07 0.32** 0.21** 0.33** 0.24**
Cooperation 0.33** 0.06 0.29** 0.08 0.34** 0.16* 0.30** 0.12
Task
Orientation
0.44** 0.28** 0.37** 0.28** 0.42** 0.32** 0.35** 0.24**
Multiple
Correlation R
0.57
0.32
0.43
0.18
0.48
0.23
0.43
0.19
*p<0.05, **p<0.01
N=246
With the individual as the unit of analysis, Table 4 shows that each of the four environment
scales was statistically significantly correlated (p<0.01) with each attitude scale and to each SAI-
II/VOSE scale. Also the bottom of Table 4 shows that the multiple correlation between outcome
scales and the set of four WIHIC scales was statistically significant for every TOSRA and SAI-II

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scale. Investigation and Task Orientation were statistically independent predictors of students’
attitudes to the Social Implications of Science. Task Orientation was a statistically independent
predictor of students’ attitudes to the Normality of Scientists. Investigation, Cooperation, and
Task Orientation were statistically independent predictors of students’ understanding of the
Tentative Nature of Science. Investigation and Task Orientation were statistically independent
predictors of students’ understanding of the Scientific Method.
It is noteworthy that every statistically significant simple correlation and regression coefficient in
Table 4 was positive, suggesting that a positive relationship existed between a more favourable
classroom learning environment and students’ attitudes and understanding of the nature of
science. This replicates considerable prior outcome-environment research (Chionh & Fraser,
2009; Fraser, Giddings, & McRobbie, 1995; Fraser & Lee, 2009; Henderson, Fisher, & Fraser,
2000; Martin-Dunlop & Fraser, 2008; McRobbie & Fraser, 1993).
Of particular note in Table 4 is Investigation and Task Orientation had stronger multivariate
associations with attitudes/understanding than did the other two WIHIC scales of Involvement
and Cooperation.
Limitations
An important limitation not yet mentioned is the ability to generalize the results to students in all
secondary science classes. There are two points to consider: 1) for some students, two years of
science are required for graduation, three years are required for others; and 2) every learning
environment is unique. The concern with the first point can be restated as a question of

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motivation. The third year science class could be an elective and therefore not required for
graduation. This introduces a factor that is not being considered – students’ motivation.
The second point to consider is the uniqueness of every classroom. Although all classroom
environments are different, each one has some features in common with other classrooms. As
the common features are identified, classrooms can be compared in areas that are not as easily
observed, such as the learning environment, students’ attitudes towards science, and their
understanding the nature of science.
Significance
The study replicated prior research on associations between learning environment and student
attitudes towards science at the secondary level. Although past research involving learning
environments and the understanding of nature of science has been predominantly at the post-
secondary level (usually involving pre-service teachers), our study established associations
between the learning environment and understanding of nature of science at the secondary level.
In addition, our study cross-validated the WIHIC, TOSRA, and SAI-II//VOSE with a specific
sample of senior high school students in Midwest United States.

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