Context-based science education by newspaper story problems: A study on motivation and learning effects

Using real-life contexts has a long-standing tradition and is considered as an important issue in both current science education and educational psychology. Drawing on research in both areas, as well as on practice reports from science classrooms, the present contribution deals with a specific form of establishing such contexts, viz. context by newspaper story problems (NSP). Using the particular form of science problems based on newspaper articles and the real-life contexts provided by them, effects on both motivation and learning were studied.In a quasi-experimental comparison of 6 physics classes of secondary level 1 (N=122; grade 10, topic: energy) learning with newspaper based problems vs. conventional textbook problems (same content, lesson plan and teacher) showed considerable positive effects. This holds for general motivation, including several subscales (p<0.01, ω2=0.52) as well as for achievement, including transfer (p<0.01, ω2=0.20). Moreover, these results show robustness towards to various individual and classroom features (e.g. gender, non-verbal intelligence and school type), and at least mid-term temporal stability. Newspaper story problems thus appear as a useful element of context-based science teaching.