Measuring the Influence of Emotional Components in a Science Education Program Through a Psychometric Approach

• Autor(a) principal: Barros, E.M.
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: da Silva, W.S., Da Poian, A.T.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ensino de Bioquímica
• Texto Completo: http://bioquimica.org.br/revista/ojs/index.php/REB/article/view/220
• topic: Vacation Course, Self-Esteem, Emotion, PANAS

Since 1985, during the vacation period, IBqM offers a program on science education directed to teachers and students from high school. The courses are based on experimental activities proposed by the participants to answer their own questions. This approach allows the learning to become amuse and concrete, facilitating the appropriation of knowledge by the participants. In this work, we used a psychometric scale developed to measure the independent constructs of positive and negative affect, as states and traits, the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule(PANAS) to investigate the effects of course methodology on the emotional discharges from the participants. PANAS was answered by the participants in the course reception to measure their affect trait. To obtain the affect states, PANAS was answered in the first and in the last days. Eventually, other measurements were done during the course. The results indicate a similar reaction of both teachers and students. We observed an increase of Positive Affect mainly related to the affects “proud”, “strong”, “active” and “inspired” when comparing the initial and final states. No changes were observed in the Negative Affect. We believe that these results suggest an increase of self-esteem among the participants that might be related to the course methodology.