Think-Pair-Share Strategy Enhances the Understanding of High School Students in Physics: The Case of Japanese Stem Educators

This research designed a lesson that allowed students to consider the principle of a magnetic top while utilizing the teaching method “Think-Pair-Share,” which promotes discussion. The purpose of this research is to practice lessons in high school science classes, analyze them, and evaluate “Think-Pair-Share.” This science class was conducted in December 2016 for 54 high school students in 11th grade in Japan. Two groups were formed among the students to enhance their understanding of electromagnets. The breakdown was as follows: from a total of 54 students, the stainless-steel group contained 27 students and the iron group contained 27 students. Each lesson was conducted over two hours. The stainless-steel group used stainless steel and iron bolts to promote discussion on the properties of an electromagnet and the iron group used iron bolts only. Apart from this teaching strategy to foster discussion, “Think-Pair-Share” was used. As a result, it was revealed that the discussion was deepened and promoted in the stainless-steel group for which the experiment was not successful the first time, rather than the iron group for which the experiment succeeded the first time. Therefore, the “Think-Pair-Share” strategy was effective in encouraging discussion that was wide-ranging and conducted from various perspectives. It was considered that discussion between two people was an important factor. In particular, it became clear that Think-Pair-Share is effective under circumstances that generate cognitive conflicts.