Transforming attitudes to science in rural India through activity based learning

K-12 science education in rural India is characterized by rote learning in teacher-centered classrooms with poor lab facilities. As a result, students often have poor attitudes toward science. To inculcate the joy of learning in rural students, we conducted three science camps in remote villages in North India. The camps emphasized hands-on learning using low-cost experiments from locally available materials. Videos, animations and simulations on mobile phones were used to supplement the physical experiments. The goal was not only to teach science, but to change the attitude of students towards science. This paper describes the results of daily assessments, pre, post, and six-month follow-up surveys. Findings include a significant improvement in attitude towards science, a particularly strong improvement for girls, and a positive effect of videos and simulations to learn abstract concepts. Also the academic marks of the students improved significantly after the camp in a longitudinal analysis. Additional insight was gained by clustering students by two simple dimensions: attitudes and learning styles. The change in attitude towards science was larger for students who prefer hands-on learning or concept learning.