What’s Your Evidence? (Chapter 2)

Chapter two is about the essential components of science learning, and how we, as teachers, can bring that to students. The four key parts of science learning are: claim, evidence, reasoning, and rebuttal.

I think the text does a very good job at explaining the difference among these four ideas. A claim is an answer to the question that sparked the investigation. For example, the question could be: “Why does glass shatter when dropped but a bouncy ball does not?” The claim would be something along the lines of: “Glass shatters when dropped and bouncy balls do not because they are made of different materials.”

Evidence is “scientific data that supports the claim.” Data are observations of the natural world. So, to return to my previous example, one example of evidence for the claim would be that the same amount of the bouncy ball and glass weigh different amounts.

The next piece of science learning is the one I believe to be the glue for all of it. Reasoning provides the underlying logic to the entire investigation and its conclusions. The reasoning for my example would be that the same amount two substances cannot be the same if they weigh differently. This relies on scientific truths, and provides the missing connection between the evidence and the claim.

The last part of science learning is the rebuttal: providing counterexamples and disproving them. The text mentions several times that rebuttals can come across as very confusing for students until they are older. I believe this is because counterexamples are like “anti-logic.” It is demonstrating why something does not make sense (revealing missing logic) rather than explaining why it does make sense (highlighting the connection). A rebuttal for my example would be a student stating: “Some people may think that bouncy balls and glass are made of the same materials because they are similar in size, but size does not indicate any other similarity, so this is false.”

The section on “Increasing the Complexity of the Framework Over Time” I found very useful. So far in this course, we have placed a lot of emphasis on introducing science to students at a young age. After all, TESLA stands for “Teaching Elementary Science Leadership Academy.” This section clarifies exactly how we can introduce science in a non-intimidating way at first and then work up to a more extensive knowledge of the scientific process over time.

We can apply Chapter 2 to our magnetism experiment. (***I was absent from class when we did the experiment, so I am connecting the reading to what I believe the investigation would be like.***) Since we are all college students and our education has exposed us to science for many years, we are probably all in the Variation 4 range. This means we will have a claim, multiple pieces of evidence, reasoning to connect the evidence with the claim, and a rebuttal. Our claim will answer the questions: “Do magnets have to touch each other to interact?” and “How does the orientation of two magnets affect how they interact?” The section on our papers that reads “Observations and Patterns” is where we are collecting data that we will later use as evidence to support our claim. After we collect our data and state our evidence and claim, we will most likely explain our reasoning (connection) between the evidence and claim. Afterwards, a rebuttal will refute any counterarguments against our claim. 

2 thoughts on “What’s Your Evidence? (Chapter 2)

  1. amw5979

    Hey Cara! This was an awesome post full of great details and explanations. I especially liked the part that you mentioned the bouncy ball vs. the glass. You provided great definitions and really elaborated on each of the four science learning methods. Although you were not in class for our experiment, I hope that by reading others blogs and talking to our classmates you were able to determine a little bit of what we talked and learned about! If you have any questions about it please feel free to ask as well. I also love the fact that you mentioned getting students to ease their way into science before fully introducing all the complex concepts. As future educators, it is very important to try to get students to view science as non-intimidating as possible, which is sometimes pretty difficult. Overall, I loved reading your thoughts on Chapter 2 and really gained a new perspective on the topics from reading as well.

  2. Taylor Manalo

    Hi Cara! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on the Chapter 2 reading. I really like how you detailed the example of the bouncy ball versus the glass, and how you allowed the topic to drive the main points of your post: the four key pieces of science learning. Also, I appreciate how you compared the idea of reasoning as a sort of “glue” that ties together learning. Claims and evidence are critical to science learning, but a true understanding of science is really reached once reasoning is brought into the picture. Reasoning attaches meaning and overarching concepts to specific observations and individual investigations. Then, rebuttal can come into play to take learning to the highest level discussed here. As you noted, rebuttal can be complicated, but the idea of scaffolding and the process of building up to the rebuttal phase really presents a realistic process for young science learners. When we worked with magnets, you are right in that we followed key practices to work through various processes. One thing that I really enjoy about our SCIED class in general is that we do encounter rebuttal through one another’s opposing observations, yet in the end, we are able to come together and to address discrepancies in order to solidify our understanding of scientific reasoning.

Leave a Reply