Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This study investigated the effect of using drama as a supporting learning strategy on students’ conceptions of the nature of science (NOS). Participants were 32 grade 10 and 11 students from a private all-girls’ school in Beirut, Lebanon. Fourteen students chose to participate in the extracurricular drama activity. The remaining 18 students were considered the control group and required only to attend the culminating performances. The drama group met for 36 hours over the course of 12 weeks to write scripts about the development of the concept of light using the work of four scientists. Data sources included open-ended questions about the tentative, empirical, and theory-laden NOS, group discussions, interviews, and researchers’ field notes and reflections. Results showed that the drama group students exhibited more informed views than the control group about the targeted aspects of NOS.

This paper argues for the significance of teaching about the “nature of science” to students of Health Sciences in Norway. The national Health Sciences’ curricula contain the core subjects of biological sciences as well as the philosophy of science and research methods. Biological science research has a large influence on the evolvement of professional knowledge in the Health Sciences. However, it is likely that Health Science graduates become involved in occupations in which they are exposed to lay health claims, pseudoscience, and comparative-alternative medicine counselling. The epistemologies of normal science and alternative-comparative medicine are largely different. In a scientific evaluation-test of health claims, most of the tested Health Science students failed. In a questionnaire, many students expressed quite “ambivalent relationships” with the aims of scientific research, and their consideration of “what counts as reliable knowledge” was to some extent non-scientific. Most students expressed positive attitudes towards the use of comparative-alternative medical treatments. For students to be able to achieve skills to critically evaluate health claims, teaching about the “nature of science” might be significant, especially within the core subjects of the Health Sciences.

There is evidence that many science teachers have limited expertise in teaching the epistemology of science (the ways in which knowledge claims in science are developed and justified). We examine the classroom talk of seven teachers as they use published lesson resources to teach about the development of scientific models in two concept areas (cell membrane structure and electromagnetism). Our aim is to provide recommendations for the content and form of professional development activities likely to support teachers’ effective uptake of these, and similar, teaching resources. We first provide a characterisation of the content of science-related classroom talk. Two distinctive lines of talk related to conceptual development can be identified in each of the Cell Membranes lessons, and an additional line of talk in each of the lessons focuses on the epistemology of science. Handling these distinctive classroom conversations was a new pedagogical challenge for these teachers. We then identify features of classroom talk likely to constrain or promote student learning about the epistemology of science. Several teachers supported student learning by making explicit statements about what students were intended to learn about the epistemology of science. Teachers also made links to other lessons to exemplify epistemic issues in a variety of science concept areas. The paper ends with a discussion of the design of continuing professional development activities to support teachers in introducing epistemic ideas in the science curriculum.

Gentner has described analogy as a mapping of terms from a base (better known) domain to a target domain. She asserts that use of analogy can lead to new conclusions in the target domain. This ‘structure mapping’ theory, though useful, does not yet describe the process of analogical reasoning. We will argue that an analogy can be used productively in a process that has two phases: first, constructing the analogy using existing knowledge of base and target domains, and second, extrapolating the analogy within the target domain. In the first phase object mapping is motivated by the recognition of mappable relations. In the second phase, the productive use of the analogy can involve creation of both new terms and relations, as a result of mapping existing terms and relations from the base domain. If analogies are to be understood critically, then a third phase might be the testing of new relations against learners’ experience. This three-phase process description of analogy has been tried out in a teaching experiment that aimed at an understanding of entropy, by an analogy to falling water. We conclude that this three-phase description is useful.

The authors are concerned with identifying and developing preservice teachers’ understandings and use of scientific models related to the nature of science and scientific inquiry. Empirical research suggests that teachers possess uninformed and/or alternative views of aspects of scientific work, in particular of the role of models and modelling in science. In this study we focus on a particular kind of scientific model: models based on mathematical equations and depicting multiple processes. Participants included graduate students and advanced undergraduates in a teacher preparation program for biology, earth and space science, physics, and chemistry in a large university in the U.S.A. The purpose of this paper is to present several assessments used to track our preservice teachers’ understandings, as they engaged in building computer models of pond ecosystems. These assessments, developed for research purposes, include 1) an open-ended questionnaire; 2) a semi-structured interview protocol used in combination with the computer models constructed by preservice teachers, and 3) a process map to track pair conversations and activities. We consider these as dynamic assessments, designed for use with the non-static work of teachers learning to build and test computer models of natural phenomena. Strengths and limitations of these assessments are discussed.

‘Models and modelling’ has made an increased contribution to research in science education in recent years. Almost all the papers published discuss either the ideas expressed by teachers/students or the implications of such ideas for the practice of science teaching/learning. Here we focus on the research instruments that we have developed in the last six years to investigate teachers’ ideas about the theme. The paper discusses the strengths and limitations of the instruments and their influence on the ‘authenticity’ of the knowledge so gained.

A concept for a curriculum concerning the particle structure of matter, which aimed at the development of students’ thinking about models, was developed for grades 9 and 10. Research results in this field indicate that thorough discussions concerning epistemology, models, and reality are necessary in class in order to develop an appropriate understanding of the micro-world (Mikelskis-Seifert, 2002). Accordingly, a learning environment was constructed in which the focus was on developing an understanding of the world of experiences and of the world of models. In this case, students had to distinguish systematically between these worlds (Seifert & Fischler, 2001). When teaching and learning about models, a further objective was that students develop metaconcepts regarding particle conception. As part of an empirical study conducted with 120 students from 8 grade, effects of this approach were analysed; the aim of the analysis was to measure the development of an appropriate understanding of models. We were also interested in the transferability of our approach to an introductory class. The results of this evaluation are presented here.

The use of analogies by teachers is influenced by their existing knowledge base, especially their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). With respect to teaching with multiple analogies, little is known about the relationship between teachers’ classroom practice and their PCK before and after teaching. This study explores that relationship. An expert chemistry teacher was the subject of this study, and three lessons on chemical equilibrium for Grade-12 students were observed. The teacher was interviewed about his teaching intentions, and a reflective post-teaching interview conducted. The analysis indicates a number of relevant correspondences and differences between the teacher’s intentions and his classroom practice. After teaching, the teacher appeared to be aware of the relevant correspondences, but was not aware of the differences, especially the absence of his intended attention to the limitations of specific analogies, and the absence of his intended check of students’ understanding of links between an analogy and its target. These results underline the need to pay attention to specific aspects of teaching with analogies in the context of science teacher education.

This paper makes the case for argument in science education drawing on a range of research efforts in the field. The specific research reported here took place over two years between 1999 and 2001 in junior high schools in the greater London area. The research was conducted in two phases. In phase 1, working with a group of 12 science teachers, the main emphasis was to develop sets of materials and strategies to support argumentation in the classroom, and to support and assess teachers’ development with teaching argumentation. In phase 2 of the project, the focus of this paper, teachers taught the experimental groups a minimum of nine lessons that involved socio-scientific or scientific argumentation. In addition, these teachers taught similar lessons to a comparison group at the beginning and end of the year. The focus of this research was to assess the progression in student capabilities with argumentation. For this purpose, data were collected from 33 lessons by videotaping two groups of four students in each class engaging in argumentation. Using a framework for evaluating the nature of the discourse and its quality developed from Toulmin’s argument pattern, the findings show that there was an improvement in the quality of students’ argumentation.

Recent approaches in educational research frame science learning in terms of the appropriation of discourse practices where argumentation plays a central role in the development of explanations and theories. The main objectives of the research reported in this paper were to (1) investigate the pedagogical strategies necessary to promote argumentation skills in students; (2) determine the extent to which the implementation of such strategies enhances teachers’ pedagogical practices with argumentation; and (3) examine the extent to which lessons which follow these pedagogical strategies lead to enhanced quality in students’ argumentation. Data collected from a set of lessons on scientific and socioscientific topics from twelve, year 8 schools in London are reported and discussed. These lessons were analysed using a framework based on Toulmin’s Argument Pattern. There were statistically significant differences in the quality of arguments generated in the classrooms of the project teachers who had participated in the training workshops. The strategies that we have adopted for working with teachers, and the frameworks to support argumentation will be discussed.