An intervention study: teaching the comparison method to enhance secondary students’ comparison competency

To tackle the growing challenges facing our societies, such as climate change, we need to understand scientific knowledge and methods. Developing scientific literacy in schools is therefore necessary. To do so, we need to be able to assess competencies associated with scientific literacy. Secondly, educators need meaningful tools which can be implemented in geography classes. One important competency students learn in geography is comparison. Although students perform comparisons in geography classes regularly, we do not know their level of comparison competency. Research is also needed on potential tools to teach the comparison method efficiently in geography classes. Therefore, in this study, we assessed the comparison competency of 83 French and German secondary students and tested a tool to enhance comparison competency in an intervention study using a pre- and post-test control group design. Results indicate that students initially possessed low levels of comparison competency. Our intervention allowed students from the experimental group to improve their comparison skills significantly. The improvement in their post-test scores was positively correlated with the use of the comparison method during the intervention. This shows that teachers should include explicit instructions on the comparison method to help students develop their scientific literacy.