The purpose of this study is to compare junior high school students` conceptual changes about force and motion and their interest in science between a group with the instruction including sports experiential learning activities and a group with tradit...
The purpose of this study is to compare junior high school students` conceptual changes about force and motion and their interest in science between a group with the instruction including sports experiential learning activities and a group with traditional instruction. In addition, for a group with sports experiential learning activities, students` conceptual changes and interest were examined according to the degree of their sports-experience before the instruction. The subject was 7th-grade students(N=82), and they were divided into two groups: experimental group and control group. The conceptual changes were positive in both groups. In the multiple choice questions the experimental group students(20.0%) were more positively changed than the control group students(17.2%). The number of students who responded with the right explanation increased 26.7% in the experimental group and 10.4% in the control group. The interest of the control group was significantly increased in the topic dimension(p<0.05). The interest of the experimental group was significantly increased in the experiential activity and the communicative activity(p<0.05). Students who had much sports experience showed the most positive changes. Moreover the interest of these students was especially increased in internal motive, receptive activity, experiential activity, and communicative activity.