Science Education Community Research Articles

Languaging-as-practice in science education: an alternative to metaphors of language-as-tool

AbstractThis commentary proposes the metaphor of “languaging-as-practice” in science education as an alternative to “language-as-tool” metaphors. Describing language as a tool implicitly positions language as static and unchanging and assumes that named languages are distinct and bounded entities. In contrast, describing languaging as a practice acknowledges the multiple and advanced ways speakers draw on many aspects of their linguistic repertoires while often crossing purported boundaries between named languages. This approach is grounded in translanguaging theory and offers a dynamic understanding of language in educational settings. It envisions students constructing and expressing scientific knowledge by drawing on their complete linguistic repertoires. By advocating for this approach, we aim to promote practices that acknowledge and leverage the diverse linguistic backgrounds of students, fostering inclusive and effective learning environments. While this approach has gained some traction in language-education circles, we believe it needs more consideration in the science education community. We also critique the limitations of viewing language merely as a tool for reproducing predefined scientific concepts and discourses, proposing that a more expansive approach to language can enhance opportunities for scientific sense-making and knowledge construction. We urge science education researchers and practitioners to shift how we think and talk about language in the science classroom to adopt and act upon a metaphor of “languaging-as-practice.”

Data science education in undergraduate physics: Lessons learned from a community of practice

It is becoming increasingly important that physics educators equip their students with the skills to work with data effectively. However, many educators may lack the necessary training and expertise in data science to teach these skills. To address this gap, we created the Data Science Education Community of Practice (DSECOP), bringing together graduate students and physics educators from different institutions and backgrounds to share best practices and lessons learned from integrating data science into undergraduate physics education. In this article, we present insight and experiences from this community of practice, highlighting key strategies and challenges in incorporating data science into the introductory physics curriculum. Our goal is to provide guidance and inspiration to educators who seek to integrate data science into their teaching, helping to prepare the next generation of physicists for a data-driven world.

Beyond the Passive Absorption of Information: Engaging Students in the Critical Reading of Scientific Articles

AbstractThere is a consensus within the science education community that primary scientific literature is a legitimate and desirable educational resource. Moreover, critical reading of scientific articles is widely recognized as a key aspect of scientific literacy. However, university science courses rarely provide students with explicit opportunities to cultivate their critical reading skills. Much of the reason for this is that instructors tend to hold a passive learning view of reading in which students are expected to absorb information from scientific articles. The purpose of this study was to provide research evidence that an active learning scenario (ALS) combining (1) argumentation, (2) peer critique (also referred to as peer assessment), and (3) the Task-Oriented Reading Instruction framework (Ritchey & List, College Teaching, 70(3), 280–295, 2022) could be a concrete and realistic possibility for engaging students in the critical reading of scientific papers. The data analyzed in this study were the written critiques of scientific research articles and written peer feedback produced by sixty-one university students (38 females and 23 males, 19–25 years old). The results indicate that the ALS effectively offered students explicit opportunities to become more active and more critical readers of scientific articles, producing arguments, anticipating counterarguments, and constructing rebuttals. Implications related to critical reading instruction in science education and supporting students’ development of critical reading skills are discussed.

The influence of COVID-19 science views, risk perceptions, and group membership on socioscientific decisions

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how much the science education community has yet to understand about myriad variables that impact accurately informed socioscientific issue decision-making. Toward that end, this study investigated 415 university biology students’ COVID-19 behaviours and opinions regarding how COVID-19 mandates might be associated with their views about COVID-19 science and scientists, risk perceptions, race/ethnicity, gender, and political orientation. Science-supported actions and mandate support were more highly exhibited by Asian and Black non-Hispanic and Hispanic students compared to White non-Hispanic students. Science supported actions and mandate support were also significantly associated with increased COVID-19 risk perceptions and knowledge and confidence about COVID-19 science. Higher levels of political conservatism was significantly associated with lower levels of COVID-19 mitigating actions and mandate support. Political orientation appeared to mediate the relationship between views about COVID-19 science, COVID-19 actions, and mandate support. These and other findings demonstrate that cognitive and sociocultural factors associated with socioscientific decision-making are complex and vary across contexts. An implication of this study is that efforts to promote a pragmatic science literacy for accurately informed SSI decision-making will require multivariate and synergistic approaches.

An Overview of Constructivism in the Special Needs Spectrum

Constructivism has dominated science education the last decades exerting great influence in that field. Nevertheless, this has not been the case for special needs sector. Indeed, few researchers have tried to extend constructivism in special needs and even fewer have investigated alternative ideas of students who lie within this spectrum. The current study tries, through literature review, to move along this line and present studies that have explored alternative ideas of students with special needs. In particular, published studies were identified through academic search engines which led to citation chasing. The collected data was read, and scrutiny analyzed leading to the final studies that were incorporated in the article. Therefore, the current article presents in a detailed and holistic view these studies that deal with alternative ideas of students with autism, learning difficulties as well as deafness about diverse physical phenomena such as mechanics, thermal phenomena, and the nature of science. Research findings suggest that these students tend to use the same alternative conceptions with those used by students of typical development, on a different frequency thought. These findings clearly support the academic belief of a holistic, inclusive education. Along this line, the findings can equip teachers with the appropriate tools to design and implement their plans based on the constructivism theory of learning in an inclusive framework. Consequently, the article fulfill to act as a motivational call for the science education community to expand research to further group of students within special needs spectrum.

Exploring pathways to food science careers in Southern California: A case study in food science career development.

Southern California is a diverse region that is home to a high concentration of food science companies, with an increasing demand for additional food scientists and technologists to join this workforce. Despite this abundance of food science companies and the high demand for jobs, there is currently a shortage in the number of qualified food scientists and technologists in the region. This shortage is also observed within higher education, with declining enrollments in the food science graduate and undergraduate programs across Southern California. Here, we conduct a case study to explore the factors that influence students from Southern California to pursue or not pursue careers in food science. We surveyed both undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled in food science as well as industry professionals in the region to determine sources of knowledge about the discipline, and motivations and barriers for pursuing careers in food science. We also surveyed high school educators in the region to gain additional perspectives on how food science is being introduced at the secondary level, if at all. Our results demonstrate that many students and high school educators are not knowledgeable about career options within food science and that students who are pursuing food science largely report similar motivations for pursuing the discipline as those currently working in the food science industry. We conclude by discussing implications for the food science education community within Southern California and beyond.

English language proficiency standards aligned with content standards: How the Next Generation Science Standards and WIDA 2020 reflect each other

AbstractThe Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) provide a vision for contemporary science education with all students, including the fast‐growing population of multilingual learners in the United States K‐12 context. The shifts heralded by the NGSS have resulted in significant changes to English language proficiency (ELP) or English language development (ELD) standards so they better align with content standards and support all students, including multilingual learners, to engage in language‐rich disciplinary practices (e.g., arguing from evidence). The purpose of this article is to describe ELP/ELD standards aligned with content standards. Specifically, we describe how the policy initiatives of the NGSS as science standards and WIDA 2020 as ELP/ELD standards reflect each other in terms of conceptual foundations and architecture of the standards guiding classroom practices. By becoming more explicitly aware of how science standards and language standards present “mirror images” of each other, science educators will be better positioned to collaborate with their language education colleagues. As this article is intended to engage science educators who are generally familiar with the NGSS but likely new to ELP/ELD standards, we describe WIDA 2020 in detail and in ways accessible to a broad audience. In doing so, we aim to ensure the science education and language education communities are coordinated in their efforts to promote equitable science learning for all students, including multilingual learners. We close with implications for research, policy, and practice through collaboration between science education (as well as other content areas) and language education.

The glue that makes it “hang together”: A framework for identifying how metadiscourse facilitates uncertainty navigation during knowledge building discussions

AbstractClassroom discussions have become a centerpiece of reform efforts in science education because talk mediates the joint co‐constructing of knowledge in science classrooms. Although decades of research underscore the importance of talk in supporting science learning, the science education community continues to grapple with how to support teachers and students in navigating the uncertainty that is associated with doing knowledge building work. To address these challenges, we must examine not just what gets constructed (the scientific ideas), but how knowledge is co‐constructed by teachers and students (the process of building those ideas) amidst uncertainty. In this study, we propose a conceptual tool for identifying organizational, epistemic, and interpretive metadiscourse markers (MDMs) in science talk. We highlight how teachers and students use these three types of MDMs as they navigate uncertainty while connecting ideas within and across multiple turns of talk, leveraging resources for knowledge building, and making interpretations about one another's ideas. We conclude with a set of suggestions for how researchers and teachers can utilize this framework to attend to the ways that MDMs index the organizational, epistemic, and interpretive dimensions of uncertainty in the knowledge building process.

Active-Learning Class Activities and Shiny Applications for Teaching Support Vector Classifiers

Support vector classifiers are one of the most popular linear classification techniques for binary classification. Different from some commonly seen model fitting criteria in statistics, such as the ordinary least squares criterion and the maximum likelihood method, its algorithm depends on an optimization problem under constraints, which is unconventional to many students in a second or third course in statistics or data science. As a result, this topic is often not as intuitive to students as some of the more traditional statistical modeling tools. In order to facilitate students’ mastery of the topic and promote active learning, we developed some in-class activities and their accompanying Shiny applications for teaching support vector classifiers. The designed course materials aim at engaging students through group work and solidifying students’ understanding of the algorithm via hands-on explorations. The Shiny applications offer interactive demonstration of the changes of the components of a support vector classifier when altering its determining parameters. With the goal of benefiting the broader statistics and data science education community, we have made the developed Shiny applications publicly available. In addition, a detailed in-class activity worksheet and a real data example are also provided in the online supplementary materials.

Womanist pedagogy and Black women’s science teaching

Racism, sexism, and classism at the societal level permeate all levels of education, and conversely, schooling reproduce social inequity. These inequities are compounded by the objective, apolitical approach that some teachers bring to science teaching. Research shows that Black female teachers continue to be more comfortable and committed to working in schools with Black and Brown students. This study presents qualitative data exploring how 21 Black women science teachers at various levels of expertise discuss and practice Womanist Pedagogy. I argue that Black women science teachers would benefit greatly from learning about the pedagogical practices of Black women teachers from the past, learning that they are not alone in the fight for classrooms built with love and informed by their lived racialized, classed, and gendered experiences. The tenets of Womanist Pedagogy can be used as a tool to showcase the power Black women bring to the science education community.

Let’s have that Conversation: How Limited Epistemological Beliefs Exacerbates Inequities and will Continue to be a Barrier to Broadening Participation

A call to the computer science education community to make our values match our actions related to broadening participation through epistemological inclusion.

Equity in teaching science during times of crisis: a study with Portuguese science teachers.

This work aims to examine how science teachers ensured equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants are six science teachers who were teaching in different middle schools within the Lisbon district. Their classes were heterogeneous, with students from different socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities, and with diverse levels of motivation to learn science and in their academic performance in science. Data were collected through written reflections and interviews. In a crisis context such as COVID-19, which affected schools worldwide, the study contributes to deepening our knowledge about equity during crisis, presenting several measures taken by teachers to deal with the pandemic. Teachers gave instructions to their students to attend classes through public television, which was accessible to the entire population, and developed complementary materials on it. Also, they created moments of individualized support to face situations of inequity, using distance learning platforms or other means of communication. Teachers built and implemented activities that value hands-on and problem solving, enabling their students to achieve academic success. We believe this paper allows the science education community to reflect on possibilities to ensure equity in the context of unpredictable crises.

Methods for Viewing Plant Stomata Responses

Plants are a vital component of human life on Earth; they provide us with food and essential nutrients as well as the oxygen we breathe. However, the science education community struggles to find ways to make plant processes less abstract and more understandable for learners. In this article we demonstrate how we make plant processes more understandable for learners by observing the behaviors of a specific plant structure, a stoma, which is a microscopic opening that plays a role in the movement of matter into and out of a plant. Recent research across plant-related science fields centers on plant stomata because they protect plants from various environmental strains, including attacks from pathogens. Translating this research into science classroom instruction has not occurred extensively. A key impediment is that few common methods to make stomata visible or demonstrate their dynamic nature to learners are available. The activities we share here make stomata visible utilizing a specific plant, Tradescantia zebrina, and common laboratory equipment. In the first activity, we share how to demonstrate stomata closing and opening by manipulating a combination of these environmental factors. In the second activity, we describe how to create a visual simulation of stomata response to attacks from microorganisms.

Improving Student Learning of Impulse and Momentum in Particle Dynamics Through Computer Simulation and Animation

Computer simulation and animation (CSA) is educational technology in which computer programs are employed to simulate and animate real-world physical phenomena and processes. CSA has attracted growing attention and received an increasing number of applications in the international science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education community in recent years. The present study focuses on developing and assessing two CSA learning modules for improving student learning and problem-solving related to impulse and momentum in particle dynamics. Both CSA learning modules integrate mathematical problem-solving procedures into computer simulation and animation. They have interactive computer graphical user interfaces, which enable students to change input variables and visualize how output variables change accordingly. A quasi-experimental, quantitative research study was performed, involving 285 undergraduate engineering students divided into a comparison group that did not use CSA and an intervention group that used CSA. The results of statistical non-parametric analysis on the data collected from pre- and post-tests on the two groups show that, on average, the intervention group achieved more learning gains than the comparison group by 44% and 40% from two CSA learning modules, respectively. The difference in learning gains between the two groups of student participants was statistically significant.

Professional development partnership between urban middle school science teachers and informal science institutions

ABSTRACT Background This study explored science teachers’ participation in a professional development partnership with informal science institutions (ISIs) designed for urban middle school science teachers, known as the Urban Advantage Science Initiative. The teacher training involved a whole school focused approach, providing teaching strategies, collaborative situated experiences, and specific classroom resources for implementing and guiding science explorations both at ISIs and in the formal classroom. The conceptual framework for the study incorporated a situated perspective model with situated, social, and distributed cognition. Purpose This long-term situated learning model engaged teachers in over 100 hours of training over five years, with an option to continue in select educational activities in subsequent years. Training was held at eight ISIs in New York City. The purpose of the study was to analyze impacts on teachers’ pedagogical philosophies and practices. Sample The ways teachers translated program principles into their practice was investigated through interviews with nine teachers and three administrators (N = 12) to provide broadened perspectives. The teacher sample was drawn from a larger group of 253 teachers with at least four years of experience in the program. Design/Methods The data of this phenomenological qualitative study were examined and integrated with the a priori conceptual framework to create an emergent explanatory framework for changing pedagogical practice and teacher motivation through a schoolwide professional development partnership with ISIs. This framework included two major components: 1) improved teacher motivation, and 2) pedagogical change. Results Teacher motivation was heightened because of their situated learning experiences at ISIs, the positive changes in their science pedagogy, and their involvement in a professional community of like-minded science educators. Conclusion As a result of this whole-school focused program that included specific roles for teachers and administrators, the long term, sustained ISI-based professional development model improved teachers’ and administrators’ perceptions of science teaching practices.

Effects of a Block-Based Scaffolded Tool on Students’ Introduction to Hierarchical Data Structures

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> In this article, the authors present findings and insights on the efficacy of using an educational block-based programming (BBP) environment—Blocks4DS, to teach the binary search tree (BST). <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</i> For a decade, BBP environments have been a hot topic in the computer science education (CSEd) community to promote interactive active learning of programming. However, little attention has been paid to BBP environments’ efficacy on nonintroductory courses like data structures and algorithms (DS&A). DS&A courses are challenging to students due to levels of abstraction that could be reduced by syntax-free features existing in BBP interfaces. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research Questions:</i> 1) Can undergraduate computing-major students learn about the BST using Blocks4DS? 2) Do undergraduate computing-major students understand better BSTs when learning with a BBP environment? and 3) How do undergraduate computing-major students perceive Blocks4DS for nonintroductory computer science (CS) topics? <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methodology:</i> A mixed-method study was designed, using a control and intervention group with 83 first and second-year CS students, to evaluate the efficacy of Blocks4DS compared to traditional instructional methods (e.g., whiteboard and pseudocode). The authors evaluated its efficacy based on students’ conceptual understanding and perceptions. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Findings:</i> It was found that, regardless of prior experience with text-based programming languages and instructional approaches, students introduced to the BST with Blocks4DS gained significant conceptual understanding, and performed as well as peers instructed with pseudocode. Also, 83.3% of students found the tool engaging and 72.3% found it useful to learn DS&A. This suggests that Blocks4DS can be used to teach DS&A.

The Development and Prospects of Socioscientific Issues Teaching in the Context of Immersive Media Technology.

Marshall McLuhan once proposed the concept of “global village,” believing that with the help of electronic media, Earth has become indistinguishable from a community, and there is only one Earth for human beings and one world for all countries. Today, with the continuous development of media technology, the concept of a human destiny community has also gained the general consensus of people around the world. The global value of the human destiny community encompasses the interdependent concept of international power, the concept of common interests, the concept of sustainable development, and the concept of global governance. In particular, the concepts of sustainable development and global governance have been advocated by the public, which in turn has led to extensive public discussions on Socioscientific Issues (SSI), in which the teaching of SSI is gradually considered by the international science education community as one of the important goals of science education. The current issues and challenges facing SSI teaching and how immersive media technologies can facilitate SSI teaching have become important issues of keen public interest.

Towards Equitable, Social Justice Criticality: Re-Constructing the "Black" Box and Making it Transparent for the Future of Science and Technology in Science Education.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in the rapid emergence of vaccines, the dual benefits of both science and technology have been lauded, while dominant, deficit-based narratives of vaccine hesitancy and mistrust in science and medicine by the general public, particularly minoritized populations, run rampant. In this paper, we argue for a counternarrative, where instead of erroneously positioning communities of color as the problem, the problem is reframed to consider what the scientific, technological, and science education communities need to do to become more trustworthy and transgress the persistent shortcomings related to racism and injustice. Specifically, in this position paper, we (a) discuss the interactions of science, technology, and society from the perspective of the nature of technology; (b) engage an understanding of how bias, access, and racism operate in and at the intersection of science, technology, and technological systems; (c) discuss implications of these ideas in science education; and finally (d) pose recommendations to counter alienation and racism with an emphasis on a sixth dimension, equitable, social justice criticality, for science-technology education. In conclusion, we make recommendations by centering a more equitable, social justice criticality of science and technology.

Reading matters more than mathematics in science learning: an analysis of the relationship between student achievement in reading, mathematics, and science

ABSTRACT Science achievement and the factors related to it are frequently discussed in science education community. However, less researchers tend to consider student achievement in other subjects, especially reading and mathematics as included in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This research examined the relationship between student achievement in reading, mathematics, and science. Based on the theoretical analysis, we proposed several hypotheses that students’ reading achievement can influence their mathematics achievement, reading achievement can influence science achievement, and mathematics achievement can influence science achievement, and we can use a triangular model to represent such relationship. To test the hypotheses, we used the dataset of PISA 2018 as the data source, selected 12,058 Chinese students as the participants, and employed Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) for data analysis. The results confirmed the hypotheses. Our findings indicated that reading and mathematics were important predictors of science achievement, and the effects of reading significantly exceeded mathematics. We, therefore, concluded that reading should be more important than mathematics and received with more concern in science learning. The inconsistency of the results in this research with previous works is also discussed below.

Research Trends in Science and Mathematics Education in South Korea 2014–2018: A Cross-Disciplinary Analysis of Publications in Selected Local Journals

Abstract Although science education and mathematics education share many characteristics as neighboring research disciplines, comparisons between the two research fields in the literature have rarely been made. In this study, we examine the two fields’ similarities and differences in the local context of South Korea by analyzing 2,426 research articles published in 15 selected local journals from both fields. The analysis revealed interesting commonalities and divergences across the two fields, suggesting a high degree of similarity in the distribution of research topics across the two fields. Nevertheless, some topics were more frequently studied in one field than the other. Based on the results, we suggest that understanding the ongoing research agendas and aims of adjacent disciplines such as mathematics education will be beneficial to the science education community by allowing self-reflection and facilitating interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. Several potential ways in which the two disciplines can cross-fertilize are discussed.