The Impact Of Sharon's Attempt At A Literacy-based Forensics

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Although students' participation in authoring their own mysteries and their comments seemed to indicate positive responses to the unit, we wanted to know if forensics influenced the students' achievement and interest in science.

Therefore, we conducted a small study to examine the impact of Sharon's first attempt at a literacy-based forensics unit with 58 students in two sections of her chemistry classes. Students were tested before the unit and after the unit with a 20-item, multiple-choice, teacher-constructed measure of physical science and forensics concepts with questions at the inferential and knowledge levels of Bloom's taxonomy.

Test questions assessed students' knowledge of forensics terms and concepts as well as their ability to classify, compare, or categorize various types of forensic evidence. Pretest and posttest ...
... data demonstrated significant gains (t = -22.91, 52, p = 0.000) in achievement.

To assess the impact of the unit on students' attitudes toward science, I designed an eight-item, open-ended questionnaire. Students were asked about their interests in science and their proclivity to engage in forensic-related activities outside of school or consider a science-related career.

Girls more so than boys reported increased interest in and positive attitudes toward science, although almost all of the students (25 of the 29 females and 13 of the 20 males responding, or 86% and 65%, respectively) reported increased interest in science as a result of the forensic unit.

Most of these students (about three fourths of the females and two thirds of the males), reported that the forensics unit caused them to like science more. Girls were twice as likely as boys (41% of the females versus 20% of the males) to report that the unit caused them to consider a career in science.

Students' responses also revealed the features of the unit that motivated them. They identified appealing aspects of the unit, such as using their imaginations to write forensic mysteries.

One student mentioned that the process of coming up with their own opinions about cases was motivating; another student stated that the actual hands-on activities of forensics made him want to do more. Some mentioned that the real-world applications and relevancy of the topic were appealing. Others reported that reading everyday texts—texts found outside of school, including media and digital texts—and writing about forensics provided them with prior knowledge of scientific concepts before instruction. Comments included the following:

"I liked the theoretical thinking involved."

"It [forensics] affects real life more than just the periodic table."

"I want to analyze things more now." "It [the unit] made me want to apply science to everyday life."

Although the majority of these students were already viewing popular forensic-related television programs outside of school before the unit (76% of the females and 50% of the males), the numbers of students watching these programs increased after participation in the unit. More students (21% of the girls and 20% of the boys) began watching these popular media programs as a response to the forensics unit.

More important to the teacher, students also reported that the unit changed the way they watched these programs. The forensics unit caused them to shift from being passive watchers to active viewers of these television programs, participating by predicting and analyzing during the episodes to help solve the cases. Students commented.

"Now I understand the TV programs more and can guess along the way."

"I still watch CSI and Numb3rs, but I look at it as if I were trying to solve the case."

"I watch Law and Order more often because I like hearing them mention things that I learned in class."