Using Web Search on a Socio-scientific Issue to Explore the Strength and Reasons of the Sixth Grade Students’ Position Change: An example of Pupils Using Mobile Phones

• Main Authors: Wen-Hao Hsu, 許文豪
• Other Authors: Jing-Wen Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47904169546298250736

碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 應用物理暨化學系自然科學教學碩士班 === 100 === The purpose of this study is to discuss the reason, growth and decline of position change toward social-science issues as well as the difference and correlation of daily practice intensity of the sixth grade students after surfing on websites with different backgrounds. The researcher is taking “Pupils use mobile phones” as an example to design three groups of websites with positive, negative and conflict search backgrounds respectively, and is adapting convenience sampling to select 151 sixth grade students from three classes of each of an elementary school in Taipei City and in Taoyuan County as object of study. Every class of students is randomly assigned to three groups of search environment, and Chi-square test is used to analyze the difference of students’ position strength and practice intensity before and after the search. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is used to analyze practice intensity in daily life and correlation of position strength before and after the search. Qualitative analysis is then used to discuss the reason of students’ position change. According to the research result: 1. Before and after web search, the position strength of the negative and the conflict group achieved a significant difference, and the position change of the negative group is the most obvious after web search, which shows the content of the search websites may affect students’ position strength distribution after web search. 2. Students’ position changed may be caused by authority, health or learning level and other factors. Before web search, the reason students who are “for” is mainly categorized in contact level and who are “against” is mainly in healthy level, followed by authoritative level. And after web search, the reason students changing position to for is mainly categorized in authoritative level, and to against is mainly categorized in healthy level. 3. Only the conflict group’s position strength and practice intensity showed significant differences after web search. If the search websites only contain positive or negative content to the discourse, it is more obvious that students keep their position toward approval or disapproval. 4. The correlation coefficient of three groups’ position strength and practice intensity before web search, or of the positive and the conflict groups’ after web search, are both between .28 and .50; the correlation coefficient of the negative groups’ after web search is up to .558, which shows both have a good correlation. If the search websites only contain negative discourse content, students’ practice intensity is more consistent to their position strength after web search. The extent to apply what they learn may be higher. Accordingly, the researcher provides recommendations for teachers using social science issues to proceed web search, helping students develop multiple position considerations and apply what they learn. Keywords: position, social-science issues, web search