Abstract
ABSTRACTThe aim of the study is to analyse teachers’ efforts to develop secondary school students’ knowledge and argumentation skills of what constitutes scientific theories. The analysis is based on Leontiev’s three-level structure of activity (activity, action, and operation), as these levels correspond to the questions why, what, and how content is taught. The unit of analysis was a school development project in science education, where design-based interventions were conducted. Data comprised notes and minutes from eight meetings, plans, and video recordings of the lessons, and a written teacher evaluation. The teachers’ (n = 7) learning actions were analysed to identify (a) concept formation in science education, (b) expressions of agency, (c) discursive manifestations of contradictions, and (d) patterns of interaction during the science interventions. Three lessons on what constitutes scientific theories were implemented in three different student groups (n = 24, 23, 24), framed by planning and evaluation meetings for each lesson. The results describe (1) the ways in which teachers became more skilled at ensuring instruction met their students’ needs and (2) the ways in which teachers’ operations during instruction changed as a result of their developed knowledge of how to express the content based on theoretical assumptions.
Highlights
According to the recent Handbook of research in science education (Lederman & Abell, 2014), the ultimate goal of science education has ‘primarily been to have a literate citizenry, to have students develop into scientifically literate individuals’ (Lederman & Abell, 2014, p. 617)
Science education has focused on three areas: the products of science, scientific processes, and the use of and social impact of science (Lederman & Abell, 2014; Millar, 2004; Osborne, Collins, Ratcliffe, Millar, & Duschl, 2003; Osborne, Driver, & Simon, 1998)
This is the case in Sweden, where biology, chemistry, and physics syllabi share the same content in the category ‘The nature of Biology/Chemistry/Physics and its working methods’
Summary
According to the recent Handbook of research in science education (Lederman & Abell, 2014), the ultimate goal of science education has ‘primarily been to have a literate citizenry, to have students develop into scientifically literate individuals’ (Lederman & Abell, 2014, p. 617). Science education has focused on three areas: the products of science (knowledge in science), scientific processes (knowledge about science), and the use of and social impact of science (Lederman & Abell, 2014; Millar, 2004; Osborne, Collins, Ratcliffe, Millar, & Duschl, 2003; Osborne, Driver, & Simon, 1998). This is the case in Sweden, where biology, chemistry, and physics syllabi share the same content in the category ‘The nature of Biology/Chemistry/Physics and its working methods’. There is still no clear definition of what the concept of the nature of science should include (see, e.g. Abd-El-Khalick, 2014; McComas, 2015; Van Dijk, 2014), there is some consensus about including the characteristics of tentativeness, empirical base, theory/law discussions, social embeddedness, and creativity (i.e. Lederman & Abell, 2014). Holbrook and Rannikmae (2007) claim that ‘education as science’ is more suitable to develop students’ socioscientific knowledge than ‘science through education’, as the former stresses e.g. learning science for handling ‘socioscientific issues within society’ (p. 1354)
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