Key Findings

Teaching Environment

• Teachers and lecturers influence student engagement: Students’ engagement at school and university is strongly influenced by the teaching environment. ‘Lecturer/teacher qualities’ are the most important aspect of the teaching environment, particularly the enthusiasm, commitment and teaching techniques of science teachers/lecturers.
• It is not what is taught, but how it is taught: Teaching that is integrative and student-focused stimulates active learning and allows some student choice over content promotes engagement.
• Science students want to be scientific: Relevance and context are important to students. Students enjoy the ability to explore scientific methods by generating and testing hypotheses in practical classes.

Transition

• Student engagement is not lost in transition: First-year university students consider themselves to be committed to a high standard of performance in their science studies and, indeed, their scores for Commitment to Performance and Learning with Excitement were significantly higher than for school students.
• Transition from school science to university science is a process: Ideally, university teaching should place greater emphasis on independent learning and critical thinking than that of school, yet the results of the present study show this is not necessarily evident during the first year of study at university.

Perceptions

• There are different perceptions between students and lecturers/teachers: University students’ perceptions of their engagement were greater than that of their lecturers, while teachers’ and lecturers’ perceptions of their teaching qualities were greater than that of their (school or university) students.

Key Recommendations

Teacher efficacy | Assisting lecturers and teachers to develop skills in the ‘teacher efficacy’ parameters identified by the study as being critical for students’ engagement

Assessment practices | Ensuring assessment practices at school and university reward critical thinking rather than reinforce low order learning.

Relevant contexts | Ensuring all content is delivered in a context that is immediately relevant to the learner.

NCEA | Building on the diversity of knowledge that results from the standards-based NCEA high school education.

Content knowledge | Guaranteeing liaison between universities and schools to ensure school leavers have the content knowledge needed to start their science degrees.