Analysis of Hands on Activity and Student Engagement in Middle School Eighth Grade Science Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether hands-on activity in a middle school science setting would increase engagement which would then increase the test scores of one group of students versus another group that was not taught using hands-on activities. The study was a pretest/posttest design, with a teacher’s observation checklist to measure student time spent on task. A measurement tool was created by the researcher to record on-task engagement during each lesson. There was no difference in engagement of eighth grade Environmental Science students when hands-on activities were provided over textbook activities with the exception that the hands-on group had more meaningful discussion the topic with their peers. In the future, additional research could expand on the current study by including a larger sample sizes and a longer observational period.