Philippine E-Journals

Developing Students’ Conceptual Understanding Using Interactive Notebook: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Joey Elechicon | Peter Ernie Paris

Discipline: Science

 

Abstract:

In the midst of the revolutionary era of science education, the battle cry for science literacy and conceptual knowledge is imperative. Hence, this Interactive Notebook introduces an engaging and creative strategy highlighting higher-order thinking skills and conceptual understanding. This quasi-experimental research design investigated the influence of interactive notebook in developing students’ conceptual understanding in biology. There are 25 purposively match-paired Grade 10 students who participated in the study. The interactive notebook intervention format involved artistic and creative strategies including student- designed construct and connect pages. The Conceptual Test in Biology with a reliability of 0.955 was used as a data collection instrument. The study was conducted in a public secondary school and lasted for four weeks. One group of students was taught using the interactive notebook and the other was through conventional teaching methods. It was found that students in both groups have low conceptual understanding as indicated in the pre-test, but was improved as noted in the post-test. When the pre-test and post-test were compared, the students exposed to interactive notebook teaching showed improvement from low to high. At the same time, those in conventional teaching also showed improvement from low to average. A significant difference was observed in the post-test scores of the two groups, supporting the interactive notebook teaching group. A significant difference was also noted between the pre- and post-test conceptual understanding of each group, however, the interactive notebook teaching group yielded better mean gain.