EXPLORING SCIENCE EDUCATION THROUGH TOYS AND HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES: PARTICIPANT INSIGHTS

A two-day international ICASE workshop on exploring science education through toys and hands-on activities was held in a demonstration school in Southern Province, Thailand. The workshop objectives were to 1) create awareness of the use of toys and hands-on activities to teach science education and 2) to expose the students to the science toys and hands-on activities in learning science in the classroom. Amongst the 168 international and local delegates who participated in the workshop, we only focused on the 132 secondary students (aged 13 to 18) from the demonstration school as our study participants. A four open-ended questionnaire was administered to the study participants the week after the conference to gauge the students’ feedback on the international ICASE workshop. A total of 113 completed and returned the questionnaires (85% response rate). Findings revealed that students responded positively towards the ICASE international workshop. The participants enjoyed the science show, science toys, cock fighting games, Mr. Wolf and Food UNO card games. Based on the positive feedback, future international workshops in science education can be organized to further expose and encourage the students to learn science through toys and hands-on activities.