Stress responses of high school students towards tasks accompanied by molecular or symbolic representations Friederike Westermann, Wolfgang H. Kirchner, Nina Minkley Behavioural Biology & Biology Education | Ruhr University Bochum
Introduction Scientific language is an important part of biology education and students should be able to use and understand it. Molecular representations are part of this language, but many students have difficulties to understand them (Bernholt et al., 2012). Therefore, molecular representations may induce
various stress responses, when students are confronted with them. Additionally students’ interest is an important factor in education (Krapp, 1992) and may influence feelings of stress.
Method 183 students (age = 16.99 ± 1.204) were randomly assigned to one of three different treatment groups and one control group. In each treatment the students had to solve the same biological tasks, which differed only in the accompanied images : (1) symbolic representations, (2)
Fig. 1: Example of a molecular representation.
Data collection
molecular representations, (3) everyday images and relative freely answerable biological questions and (4) no tasks or images at all (free writing task control condition). Additionally their biological interests and understanding of biological topics were gathered.
Subjective stress perception
• VAS (Visual Analogue Scale, Folstein & Luria, 1973): 100 mm-long horizontal line with the left end labeled “no stress,” and the right “maximum stress” • Time of measurement: before, directly after and 15 minutes after the task
Physiological stress perception
• Salivary cortisol concentration • Time of measurement: before, directly after and 15 minutes after the task
Biological interest
• Questionnaire (Rost et al., 2004) and VAS
Fig. 2: Examples of different task accompanying images: (1) symbolic treatment, (2) molecular treatment, (3) open treatment; Linder 2006, Campbell 2009, www.jamiesonvitamins.com).
Results and conclusion The subjective perceived stress differed between the treatment groups. All students felt more stressed directly after the task. Moreover, students who were confronted with molecular representations felt significantly more stressed, compared to all other groups (F (5.79, 345.25) = 10.82; p = .000; η2 = .153, fig. 3). Additionally, in all treatments women felt more stressed compared to men directly after the test (F (1; 145) = 16.564; p = .000; η2 = .103, fig. 4). There was no interaction between stress and students‘ interest in biology or between stress and test performance. The salivary cortisol concentration decreased in all treatments. However, students who have more science courses at school, showed a lower cortisol concentration directly after the test (F (1, 73) = 7.58; p = .007, η2 = .094), compared to students without extra courses (fig. 5). Our findings suggest that molecular representations are a psychological stressor. They can induce feelings of stress, even if the images are not necessary for successful task-solving. Moreover, frequent confrontation with molecular representation (as during additional science courses) seem to buffer this association.
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Fig. 3: Perceived stress before, directly after and 15 min. after the task (***p = .000). ** ***
Fig. 4: Perceived stress of women and men directly after the task (***p = .000).
Fig. 5: Cortisol concentration directly after the task (**p = .007).
Contact
References
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Bernholt, S., Fischer, I., Heuer, S., Taskin, V., Martens, J. & Parchmann, I. (2012). Die chemische Formelsprache - (un-)vermeidbare Hürden auf dem Weg zu einer Verständnisentwicklung? CHEMKON, 19(4), 171–178. Folstein, M.F. & Luria, R.E. (1973). Reliability, validity, and clinical application of the visual analogue mood scale. Psychological Medicine, 3, 479–486. Krapp, A. (1992). Interesse, Lernen und Leistung. Neue Forschungsansätze in der Pädagogischen Psychologie. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 38(5), 747– 770. Rost, D. H., Dickhäuser, O., Sparfeldt, J. R., & Schilling, S. R. (2004). Fachspezifische Selbstkonzepte und Schulleistungen im dimensionalen Vergleich. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 18(1), 43–52.
