Muscat: A research study titled ‘Effects of using Science Writing Heuristic strategy on 7th grade students’ academic achievement and attitude towards scientific writing’ showed that Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) has an impact on students’ performance in achievement tests.
As revealed in the latest issue of Scientific Insights magazine published by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the study aimed to investigate the effect of using SWH strategy. It is defined as a writing-to-learn model for learning from laboratory activities in secondary science and can be used by teachers as a framework to design classroom activities, and on developing the Omani 7th grade female students’ academic achievement in science and their attitude towards scientific writing. It also targeted assisting students to investigate and discover in order to deeply understand concepts of scientific knowledge.
The study used a quasi-experimental approach. A sample of 49 female students was randomly selected and divided into two groups: Experimental group (24 female students) that was taught using the SWH strategy and a control group (25 female students) that was taught using the traditional way in the second semester of the 2018/2019 academic year.
The findings of the study showed that the students of the experimental group that used the SWH approach outperformed those who did not apply this strategy. A significant difference in the academic achievement and the attitude towards scientific writing was observed in favor of the experimental group. Unlike the control group that failed to understand the educational material using the traditional approach, the experimental group had a positive attitude towards learning Chemistry.
The study was conducted by Prof. Abdullah Khamis Ambosaidi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education (MoE), and Afrah Salem Al Maktoumi, Science Teacher at the MoE.
The findings of the study were published in the Journal of Educational Sciences, a scientific refereed journal issued by the Saudi Educational and Psychological Association at King Saud University.
It is recommended that teachers should be encouraged to activate the writing portal for education to develop students’ educational attainment, promote their positive attitudes towards scientific writings, and hold workshops for teachers, senior teachers and supervisors to train them in the way of applying the SWH in teaching science, and to include lessons designed in accordance with the SWH in science books so that teachers can benefit from them in preparing similar lessons.
Scientific Insights is a scientific journal published every three months by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in both Arabic and English.
