Goal Of Science Education Research Articles

Tackling Tough Topics: Using Socio-Scientific Issues to Help Museum Visitors Participate in Democratic Dialogue and Increase Their Understandings of Current Science and Technology

In a world of increasing scientific and technological complexity, where science and technology play an expanding role in our lives, there is need for a democratic citizenry that is skilled at discussing and making choices that are informed by science and shaped by individual and collective values. Although an oft argued rationale for teaching science is the need for informed citizens, few have connected science education goals to democratic dialogue. At the Museum of Science, taking on this task—to promote democratic dialogue and teach the public about current science and technology—has meant a change in our approach to science education over the past decade. We know that creating an informed citizenry prepared to address today's challenges requires educating the public about cutting edge science and technology research connected to the issues of the day, but it also requires moving beyond a public understanding of science model to a public engagement with science model in which the public's expertise, values, and personal experience are respected, explored, and discussed. Socio-scientific topics ranging from “Under what conditions should nanotechnology in medicine and personal care products be made available to the public?” to “Should parents be able make decisions about their future child based upon their genetic sequence?” have proven to be an effective means to achieve the goals of public engagement mode. In the projects detailed here, we show how and why they also prove effective as a means by which science museums can promote democratic dialogue and learning about current science and technology.

The Proof of the Pudding?: A Case Study of an “At-Risk” Design-Based Inquiry Science Curriculum

When students collaboratively design and build artifacts that require relevant understanding and application of science, many aspects of scientific literacy are developed. Design-based inquiry (DBI) is one such pedagogy that can serve these desired goals of science education well. Focusing on a Projectile Science curriculum previously found to be implemented with satisfactory fidelity, we investigate the many hidden challenges when using DBI with Grade 8 students from one school in Singapore. A case study method was used to analyze video recordings of DBI lessons conducted over 10 weeks, project presentations, and interviews to ascertain the opportunities for developing scientific literacy among participants. One critical factor that hindered learning was task selection by teachers, which emphasized generic scientific process skills over more important cognitive and epistemic learning goals. Teachers and students were also jointly engaged in forms of inquiry that underscored artifact completion over deeper conceptual and epistemic understanding of science. Our research surfaced two other confounding factors that undermined the curriculum; unanticipated teacher effects and the underestimation of the complexity of DBI and of inquiry science in general. Thus, even though motivated or experienced teachers can implement an inquiry science curriculum with good fidelity and enjoy school-wide support, these by themselves will not guarantee deep learning of scientific literacy in DBI. Recommendations are made for navigating the hands- and minds-on aspects of learning science that is an asset as well as inherent danger during DBI teaching.

Opportunities and Challenges in Next Generation Standards

Goals for literacy, math, and science education may increase citizens' capacity to argue from evidence.

A Reflection on Distorted Views of Science and Technology in Science Textbooks as Obstacles to the Improvement of Students’ Scientific Literacy

<p style="text-align:justify">Scientific literacy has been increasingly considered a major goal of science education. While textbooks remain the most widespread tools for pursuing this goal within classrooms, they have been slow to adapt to the most recent epistemological paradigms, often still conveying distorted views of science and technology. Accordingly, we present herein a theoretical framework specifically intended to highlight the potential of textbooks to promote students’ scientific literacy. It is additionally argued that, often, the misconceptions conveyed by textbooks represent obstacles to the acquisition of a fair image of science and, therefore, to the acquisition of scientific literacy. Finally, a textbook analysis is suggested.</p>

The meaning of ‘relevance’ in science education and its implications for the science curriculum

‘Relevance’ is one of the key terms related to reforms in the teaching and learning of science. It is often used by policy-makers, curriculum developers, science education researchers and science teachers. In recent years, many policy documents based on international surveys have claimed that science education is often seen (especially at the secondary school level) as being irrelevant for and by the learners. The literature suggests that making science learning relevant both to the learner personally and to the society in which he or she lives should be one of the key goals of science education. However, what ‘relevant’ means is usually inadequately conceptualised. This review of the literature clearly reveals that the term relevance is used with widely variant meanings. From our analysis of the literature, we will suggest an advanced organisational scheme for the term ‘relevance’ and provide helpful suggestions for its use in the field of the science curriculum.

Fundamentos epistemológicos das relações CTS no ensino de ciências

Visamos a discutir os fundamentos epistemológicos das relações CTS (Ciência, Tecnologia, Sociedade) presentes em temas considerados socialmente relevantes no ensino de ciências. Consideramos que um dos principais objetivos do ensino de ciências numa abordagem CTS é o desenvolvimento da capacidade de tomada de decisões por parte dos estudantes, contribuindo, assim, para sua participação na sociedade. Embora haja uma busca por mudanças, as pesquisas têm mostrado que, nas escolas, os conhecimentos científicos ainda são apresentados aos alunos com status de conhecimento superior aos demais, como sendo a verdade absoluta. Como resultados preliminares, destacamos que as pesquisas apontam para uma crescente valorização dos estudos CTS, que indicam a necessidade de explorar os conhecimentos sob um caráter mais amplo, buscando trabalhar ciências numa perspectiva curricular, cuja lógica de organização é estruturada em temas, com os quais são selecionados os conteúdos de ensino de ciências. Entretanto, o desenvolvimento da abordagem CTS nas escolas ainda é um desafio, pois a ciência e a tecnologia são abordadas de forma meramente ilustrativa, dissociadas das discussões de nosso tempo, em que paradoxalmente vivemos em constante contato com aparatos científicos e tecnológicos. É preciso contrastar as visões oficiais presentes nos sistemas de ensino e constituir fontes de visões alternativas para o ensino de ciências, buscando avançar no sentido de concepções de ciências e seu ensino, concernentes com o século XXI.

A Cultural Perspective of Conceptual Change: Re-examining the Goal of Science Education

The goal of science education is usually meant to develop students’ basic knowledge, skills, and scientific attitudes as stated in many countries’ curriculum documents, with little consideration of what backgrounds students bring into the classroom. A cultural approach to education has challenged this universal goal of science education. This paper provides a cultural analysis of conceptual change and recommends an argument approach to teaching for conceptual advancement. It argues that the outcome of classroom discourse cannot be oriented to be a replacement of students’ intuitive conceptions with scientific notions, rather coexistence between scientific understanding and culture/experience-based views is considered to be a more reasonable and realistic goal.

Interactions of Economics of Science and Science Education: Investigating the Implications for Science Teaching and Learning

In recent years, there has been upsurge of interest in the applications of interdisciplinary perspectives on science in science education. Within this framework, the implications of the so-called “economics of science” is virtually an uncharted territory. In this paper, we trace a set of arguments that provide a dialectic engagement with two conflicting agendas: (a) the broadening of science education to include the contextual positioning of science including economical dimensions of science, and (b) the guarding of the proliferation and reinforcement of those aspects of economics of science such as commodification of scientific knowledge that embraces inequity and restricted access to the products of the scientific enterprise. Our aim is broadly to engage, as science education researchers, in the debates in economics of science so as to investigate the reciprocal interactions that might exist with science education. In so doing, we draw out some recommendations whereby the goals of science education might provide as much input into the intellectual debates within philosophy of science on issues related to the commercialisation and commodification of scientific knowledge. We explore some implications of commodification of science in the context of modelling and argumentation in science education.

Scientists and education professionals can present at Geophysical Information for Teachers Workshop

As many members know, every year at the Fall Meeting, the AGU Education and Public Outreach department collaborates with the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) to hold a workshop for K–12 Earth and space science teachers and informal educators. These Geophysical Information for Teachers (GIFT) workshops allow science teachers to hear about the latest Earth and space research from the scientists making the discoveries, explore new classroom resources for their students, and visit exhibits and technical sessions during the meeting for free. Successful GIFT workshops were held at the December 2010 and 2011 meetings, where excellent teams of presenters discussed a range of topics that addressed AGU's science and society and education goals and objectives (see http://www.agu.org/about/strategic_plan.shtml).

중등 예비 과학교사들의 지구과학영역 탐구문제 개발 능력 분석

과학교육의 목적은 과학적 소양의 함양이며 이를 달성하기 위해서는 학교현장에서는 과학탐구의 실행을 중요한 목표로 삼고 있다. 이때 과학탐구의 단계는 문제제기, 가설설정, 자료수집 및 변환, 자료해석 및 결론도출로 이루어져 있다. 하지만 학교에서 학생들의 과학탐구단계는 자료수집 및 변환에 해당하는 단계에 치중되어 있으며, 문제제기는 나머지 단계를 결정하는 가장 중요한 시작의 단계임에도 불구하고 학교현장에서는 학생들에게 문제제기 기회가 거의 주어지지 않고 있다. 이 연구에서는 지구과학을 가르치는 예비교사들의 탐구문제 개발 능력 실태를 파악하고, 연구팀에서 개발한 과학탐구 문제 개발 가이드(IQDG)를 경험 후에는 탐구문제 개발 능력이 향상되었는지, 그리고 이러한 탐구문제개발 능력은 탐구설계 능력과는 어떤 관계가 있는지를 알아보았다. 연구결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 지구과학 예비교사들에 의해 제안된 탐구문제의 수준과 정교성은 IQDG를 통해서 향상되었다. 둘째, 가장 높은 빈도수를 보인 탐구문제의 유형은 실험상황에서 나타난 결과들 사이에 무슨 관계가 있는지를 파악하는 '관계-탐구문제'와, 두 번째의 빈도수를 보인 유형은 결과에 대해서 원인을 찾는 '왜-어떻게 탐구문제'인 것으로 파악되었다. 마지막으로, 수준 및 정교성이 높은 탐구문제는 역시 높은 수준의 탐구설계 능력을 보여줌에 따라 탐구문제 개발 능력은 곧 전체적인 탐구과정의 성공에 영향을 미치는 중요한 요소임을 결론 내릴 수 있다. Scientific literacy has long been as one of the key goals of science education, and using scientific inquiry in school science has became an important objective to be achieved. The processes of scientific inquiry consist of proposing/developing inquiry question, designing and conducting investigation, collecting, analyzing and interpreting data, and communicating the results. However, most students experience mainly collecting and transforming data in inquiry processes in science class and they are barely exposed to the opportunities of proposing/developing inquiry questions. Middle school earth science preservice teachers participated in this study (N=36) and their abilities of developing inquiry questions were surveyed. Participants' abilities of developing inquiry questions were investigated whether they were enhanced with activities using the Inquiry Questions Development Guide (IQDG). Also, this study was interested in whether there was any relationship between abilities of developing inquiry questions and designing inquiry investigation. The results of this study were as follows; first, the level and preciseness of inquiry questions and its preciseness developed by participating teachers were enhanced after experiencing IQDG. In addition, teachers' dominating inquiry question-types were two: one is a 'relationship-inquiry question' in which students could discover the relationship between results found in the given experimental situations and the other one is a 'why-how inquiry problem' in which students could explore a cause or a process that results in the outcomes. Finally, the higher level of and preciseness the of inquiry questions were identified as an important factor the determined teachers' abilities of designing more logical investigation. A process of proposing/developing inquiry question was identified as one of the most important processes contributing to a success of scientific inquiry investigation.

Now for the hard part: The path to coherent curricular design

Now for the hard part: The path to coherent curricular design

The Development of In-Service Science Teachers’ Understandings of and Orientations to Teaching the Nature of Science within a PCK-Based NOS Course

The nature of science (NOS) has become a central goal of science education in many countries. This study sought an understanding of the extent to which a nature of science course (NOSC), designed according to the conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for teaching nature of science (NOS), affects in-service science teachers’ understanding and learning of NOS, and their orientations towards teaching it. A qualitative research approach was employed as a research methodology, drawing upon pre- and post-instruction NOS questionnaires, field notes, and in-service teachers’ weekly journal entries and assignments. Open-ended NOS questionnaires, used to assess participants’ understandings of NOS, were analysed and categorized as either informed, partially informed and naive. Other qualitative data were analysed through an inductive process to identify ways in-service teachers engaged and learned in the NOSC. The results indicate that at the beginning of the course, a majority of the in-service science teachers held naive understandings of NOS, particularly with respect to the definition of science, scientific inquiry, and differences between laws and theories. They viewed implicit project-based science and science process skills as goals of NOS instruction. By engaging in the course, the in-service science teachers developed an understanding of NOS and orientations to teaching NOS based on various elements, especially reflective and explicit instruction, role modelling, and content- and non-content embedded instruction. The aim of this study is to help science teacher educators, consider how to support and develop science teachers’ understandings of NOS while being mindful of PCK for NOS, and develop methods for teaching NOS frameworks.

“But at school … I became a bit shy”: Korean immigrant adolescents’ discursive participation in science classrooms

In reform-based science curricula, students’ discursive participation is highly encouraged as a means of science learning as well as a goal of science education. However, Asian immigrant students are perceived to be quiet and passive in classroom discursive situations, and this reticence implies that they may face challenges in discourse-rich science classroom learning environments. Given this potentially conflicting situation, the present study aims to understand how and why Asian immigrant students participate in science classroom discourse. Findings from interviews with seven Korean immigrant adolescents illustrate that they are indeed hesitant to speak up in classrooms. Drawing upon cultural historical perspectives on identity and agency, this study shows how immigrant experiences shaped the participants’ othered identity and influenced their science classroom participation, as well as how they negotiated their identities and situations to participate in science classroom and peer communities. I will discuss implications of this study for science education research and science teacher education to support classroom participation of immigrant students.

Between Training and Popularization: Regulating Science Textbooks in Secondary Education

Recruitment into the scientific community is one oft-stated goal of science education--in the post-Sputnik United States, for example--but this obscures the fact that science textbooks are often read by people who will never be scientists. It cannot be presupposed that science textbooks for younger audiences, students in primary and secondary schools, function in this way. For this reason, precollegiate-level science textbooks are sometimes discussed as a subset of literature popularizing science. The high school science classroom and the textbook are forums for exposing the public to science. The role of governments and educational institutions in regulating the consumption of these texts not only determines which books are used; it influences how they are written, read, and deemed authoritative. Therefore such science textbooks should not be seen as (at best) the disjunction of texts-for-training and books-for-popularization. A changing sense of what "textbooks" are compels a different understanding of their use in the history of science.

Activity matters: Understanding student interest in school science

AbstractA genuine interest in science is an important part of scientific literacy, and thus a critical goal for science education. Recent studies, however, have found that school science has not been effective in meeting this goal, an important reason for which is the lack of knowledge about what makes science interesting (or not) to the students. Using instructional episodes as the unit of analysis, this study investigated the effects of learning environment elements (content topic, activity, and learning goal) on student interest in science. The findings indicated that when judging the interestingness of an instructional episode, students focused primarily on the form of activity rather than content topic and learning goal. Activities that were “hands‐on” in nature and allowed for engagement with technology elicited higher interest. This study highlights the need to place more emphasis on the role of activity in constructing interesting learning environments, and in the mean time, suggests that student science interest could be improved by making changes to relatively easy‐to‐manipulate aspects of learning environments, such as those examined in the study. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 515–537, 2012

Stichwort: Naturwissenschaftlicher Unterricht

Keyword: teaching science Abstract: teaching science is again receiving increased attention in educational science, didac- tic and political debates. this review article will present the focal points of research concerning the didactics of science and perspectives for the development of science teaching. It will look at the goals of science education, on the one hand, and at the topics of empirical research and studies concerning a substantive development of teaching and lessons in science, on the other. the contribution closes with an outlook on the implementation of new developments and future perspectives for science education.

Argumentation in the Chemistry Laboratory: Inquiry and Confirmatory Experiments

One of the goals of science education is to provide students with the ability to construct arguments—reasoning and thinking critically in a scientific context. Over the years, many studies have been conducted on constructing arguments in science teaching, but only few of them have dealt with studying argumentation in the laboratory. Our research focuses on the process in which students construct arguments in the chemistry laboratory while conducting various types of experiments. It was found that inquiry experiments have the potential to serve as an effective platform for formulating arguments, owing to the features of this learning environment. The discourse during inquiry-type experiments was found to be rich in arguments, whereas that during confirmatory-type experiments was found to be sparse in arguments. The arguments, which were developed during the discourse of an open inquiry experiment, focus on the hypothesis-building stage, analysis of the results, and drawing appropriate conclusions.

Science for All: Engaging Students with Special Needs in and About Science

The notion of “science for all” suggests that all students—irrespective of achievement and ability—should engage in opportunities to understand the practice and discourse of science. Improving scientific literacy is an intrinsic goal of science education, yet current instructional practices may not effectively support all students, in particular, students with special needs. Argument-based inquiry approaches, such as the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH), require all students to construct their scientific understandings by engaging in investigations and negotiating their ideas in multiple contexts, such as discussions and writing. Various SWH studies demonstrated that students engaged in appropriating the language, culture, practice, and dispositions of science generally improved their critical thinking and standardized test scores. The implementation of such an approach has several implications for science and special education research and practice, including how learning environments should be established to encourage the inclusion of all students’ ideas, as well as how scaffolded supports can and should be used to support science learning.

Special Issue: Science Education and Assessment in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching

IN THE JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING Guest Editors: Nancy Butler Songer and Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo As the topic of assessment emerges as a central theme within many areas of education, new opportunities in science education-assessment work arise. As we struggle to understand what it means to make teaching and learning more accountable, we need strong research on the best ways to design, analyze and use assessments for science education. Assessment covers many subareas including formative assessment, summative assessment, assessment of teaching, high stakes tests, international assessments such as TIMSS and PISA, the evaluation of online portfolios, assessment of twenty-first century knowledge and skills, learning progressions, and real-time assessment. The Editors of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching invite you to prepare a manuscript for a forthcoming issue on science education and assessment. In preparing manuscripts, we encourage articles that contain any form of empirical data or that provide important theoretical and foundational grounding for the field. Research approaches could include qualitative or quantitative approaches, theoretical development, or psychometric testing of measures or instruments, such as the assessment of cognitive, behavioral, or affective outcomes at the individual, program, organization, or systems levels. Some possible research questions might be: As we usher in learning goals for twenty-first century science education, what should our assessment look like? What empirical information do we have that helps us understand the status of current classroom-based assessments in science? What kinds of information do chapter tests at the back of textbooks provide for us about student knowledge of motion? How would we design and evaluate a better test of this information? What is the best means to gather information about students' development of scientific explanations about a particular science area, (i.e. biodiversity) over a six-year span associated with a particular learning progression? What new information can we obtain about teacher practices through new technology-based assessments? Manuscript Submission Deadline: January 10, 2012 Reviews returned: March 1, 2012 First revisions due: April 1, 2012 Second revisions due: May 15, 2012 Expected publication: August 2012 Submissions of manuscripts should follow the publication guidelines for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and be submitted electronically to Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jrst). Select “Special Issue” option and identify the special theme as “Assessment.” Manuscripts selected after competitive, peer-reviewed process, will be published with reaction from experts in the field. Inquiries concerning the suitability of possible contributions to this special issue should be sent directly by email to one of the Guest Editors: Nancy Butler Songer (songer@umich.edu) or Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo (Maria.Ruiz-Primo@ucdenver.edu).

Looking to the Future: Building a Curriculum for Social Activism

361 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 21 No. 1 (2011) ISSN: 1546-2250 Looking to the Future: Building a Curriculum for Social Activism Hodson, Derek (2011). Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers; 406 pages. ISBN 9789460914706. Available from www.sensepublishers.com for €45 or US$49. In advocating an action-oriented and issues-based curriculum, this book takes the position that a major, but shamefully neglected, goal of science and technology education is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to confront the complex and often ill-defined socio-scientific issues they encounter in daily life as citizens in an increasingly technologydominated world carefully, critically, confidently and responsibly. The author outlines proposals for addressing socio-scientific issues through a curriculum organized in terms of four increasingly sophisticated levels of consideration. The book adopts a highly critical and politicized stance towards the norms and values that underpin both scientific and technological development and contemporary scientific, engineering and medical practice; criticizes mainstream STS and STSE education for adopting a superficial, politically naïve and, hence, educationally ineffective approach to consideration of socio-scientific issues; takes the view that environmental problems are social problems occasioned by the values that underpin the ways in which we choose to live; and urges teachers to encourage students to reach their own views through debate and argument about where they stand on major socio-scientific issues, including the moral-ethical issues these often raise. More controversially, the author argues that if students are to become responsible and politically active citizens, the curriculum needs to provide opportunities for them to experience and learn from socio-political action. The relative merits of direct and indirect action are addressed; notions of learning about action, learning through action and learning from action are developed; and a case is made for compiling a user-friendly database reflecting on both successful and less successful action-oriented curriculum initiatives. Finally, the book considers some of the important teacher education issues raised by this radically new approach to teaching and learning science and technology. The book is intended primarily for teachers and student teachers of science, technology and environmental education; graduate students and researchers in education; teacher educators; curriculum developers and those responsible for educational policy. Reviewer Information Chawla Louise ...