ZARAGOZA NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL 1

San Rafael, Zaragoza Nueva Ecija

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Experiential Learning Activities in Teaching Science:Implications in Student’s

Engagement

Introduction

Rapid socio-cultural changes and ever-increasing educational requirements drive

the need for innovative pedagogical approaches to the educational process. Traditional

teaching's teacher-centered assimilative learning is rapidly being replaced with a learner-

centered active/participative learning experience (Voukelatou, 2019).

The defining element of experience-based learning is that the learner's experience

takes center stage in all aspects of teaching and learning. The history of learning via

experience is intertwined with the history of epistemology—the search for the foundation

of genuine knowledge. The phrases experience and experiment have the same etymology

(Cohen, et al., 2020).

As stated by Barkley & Major (2020), As the students involve in educationally

purposeful activities, they are enjoying, at the same time they learning easier than usual.

The term engagement represents the effectiveness of educational practices and a pattern

of involvement in a variety of activities in and out the classroom

Havik and Westergård (2018) stated that the students who have a high-quality

classroom interactions were more involved in school, and emotional support from

teachers had the highest relationship with engagement.

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San Rafael, Zaragoza Nueva Ecija
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Motivation, which is related to classroom involvement, is another important

deciding element of educational achievement. Furthermore, based on the constructivist

perspective, experiential learning (EL) as a novel technique in education and a learner-

centric pedagogy is at the center of attention, as a consequence of its contributions to

increasing the value of education, which focuses on building abilities and experiences

(Rodriguez & Morant, 2017).

Students must become cognitively involved in class, outside of class, affectively

engaged, and physically engaged in order to understand new material and exhibit mastery

of the new information. More experiential learning activities have been provided to

students as a method of enhancing student involvement (Burch, et al., 2016)

There are some studies that provide the experience of students when it comes to

experiential learning in science but there is a huge research gap that needed to be

adressed such as the implication of this study among junior highschool teachers that

teaches science subjects

This research is urgently needed to be conducted due to the fact that we are back to

face to face classes, and we require to explore the experiences of students about the

interaction and activity based learning.

The goal of this study is to provide understanding about the experience of the

students about experiential learning.

The research entitled, “Experiential Learning Activities in Teaching Science:

Implications in Student’s Engagement” will be conducted in Zaragoza National High

School among Junior High School Teachers this school year 2022 to 2023. The scope of
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San Rafael, Zaragoza Nueva Ecija
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
this study are only the experiences of the teachers of Zaragoza National High School that

teaches science through experiental activities.