SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

 
vol.40 suppl.2Boys in "trouble": Contestations, contradictions and conflicting notions of Coloured high school masculinitiesExamining science performance of South African Grade 9 learners in TIMSS 2015 through a gender lens author indexsubject indexarticles search
Home Pagealphabetic serial listing  

Services on Demand

Article

Indicators

Related links

  • On index processCited by Google
  • On index processSimilars in Google

Share


South African Journal of Education

On-line version ISSN 2076-3433
Print version ISSN 0256-0100

Abstract

MIRKIN, Joshua; EVANS, Rinelle  and  FERREIRA, Johan. The arts in science? Using poetry to teach Chemistry in Grade 9 Philip. S. Afr. j. educ. [online]. 2020, vol.40, suppl.2, pp.s1-s11. ISSN 2076-3433.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/saje.v40ns2a1801.

Modern science education the world over deliberately remains in the objective, rational, positivist paradigm. In South African classrooms, this paradigm is often alienating for young learners who then stop learning science at the end of Grade 9. Literature indicates that an arts-rich education improves learner engagement, attitudes and test scores, as evidenced by science Nobel laureates who engage more with the arts than other scientists. The research reported in this study involved the presentation of a lesson on acids and bases to 222 Grade 9 learners in 4 schools in the greater Tshwane region to establish whether their interest levels in the subject would improve when using a poem and video that characterise, describe and demonstrate scientific concepts. An in-class intervention of 40 minutes was used with identical Likert-scale, pre and post-tests analysed using the Wilcoxon and f-test. The results showed that the arts-rich lesson engaged learners in a manner which holistically improved their interest levels. The results were independent of gender, home language and the type of large, urban, government school that they attended. The results were not significant for the small, semi-rural, private school research site.

Keywords : art-infused education; holistic education; science education; science poetry.

        · text in English     · English ( pdf )

 

Creative Commons License All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License