SCIED 552: Science Teaching and Learning Developing Models of Science Teaching

This week’s readings were concerned with the topic of discipline based education research. The articles specifically dealt with chemistry and biology. The subject of teaching physics was not covered (thankfully). The first article, by Brownell and Kloser, discussed the topic of CUREs (2015). CUREs stands for Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience. CURE’s are an approach to labs that moves away from the traditional cookbook style of lab and toward a more subject appropriate lab model focused on inquiry and the learning of lab skills as well as the scientific method. One thing that I would like to have seen in this article is an example of a CURE type lab. The reason for this is that the table on page 528 describes cookbook labs as only focusing on the conclusions and communication aspect of the lab. The labs that I have done in the past, which I would refer to as cookbook, seem more similar to a blend of the four types of CUREs listed in the table. For example, in many chemistry labs the lab began with a review of theory, then the methods were given in cookbook fashion, analysis was usually open ended (relying on the lecture for the right approach) and then conclusions would be drawn. This seems like a CURE style of lab but I can’t be sure without a more concrete example. Also, what problem is the CURE method meant to address? Labs have been taught cookbook style for decades and many scientists have been produced from this learning approach. As a student I hated cookbook style labs but is that the main motivation for reform?

The second paper, by Galloway et al., addressed this issue of affect directly (2015). The authors surveyed students to determine how they felt about the lab. The idea behind this was that learning requires emotions as well as thought and action. The main questions that this paper raised for me was: would the results of this paper be different if the student who were surveyed were chemistry majors and if the responses to the survey corresponded to student retention. Retention in this case referring to student’s staying with their chosen major. The first question came to mind because the way a student feels about an experience can often be influenced by their motivation for completing the coursework. For example, a biology major might have no interest in chemistry but is doing the lab because they are required to. In this case generating interest or positive affect might be a significantly different undertaking then it would be for someone who is actually interested in the chemistry. Second, does a lack of interest or positive affect cause students to score poorly and/or leave the major? If so, then improving positive affect would be a hugely important topic.

The third paper, by Hofstein and Lunetta, is similar to the first paper in that it deals with the issue of reforming science labs for the modern world (2003). This paper does not seek to investigate a single form of lab instruction, like CUREs, but is more of a review paper that highlights changes in the application of labs in a learning setting over the past twenty years. The focus is still on how to move away from the cookbook style of lab and toward a more authentic style. I think that this pursuit is an important one. I have taken many chemistry labs, for example, and yet I would have no idea where to start if someone asked me to synthesize anything. The reason for this is that the labs that I did focused on learning physical tasks and following directions but never taught me why I was doing the steps in the lab. As a result, I had a tool chest of chemistry techniques but no idea of where or when to apply them, just how to apply them. I hope that this new push for lab reform solves this type of shortcoming.

References

Brownell, S. E., & Kloser, M. J. (2015). Toward a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of course-based undergraduate research experiences in undergraduate biology. Studies in Higher Education, 40(3), 525-544.

Galloway, K. R., Malakpa, Z., & Bretz, S. L. (2015). Investigating affective experiences in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory: Students’ perceptions of control and responsibility. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(2), 227-238.

Hofstein, A., & Lunetta, V. N. (2004). The laboratory in science education: Foundations for the twenty‐first century. Science education, 88(1), 28-54.

Brownell and Kloser’s article on “course-based undergraduate research experiences” or CUREs discusses the move from cookbook labs to labs that engage students in more authentic research that reflect the nature of real scientific research. In other words, students should engage in “knowledge-building research” in undergraduate research labs. This might just be my opinion, but thinking up “real life” research that also relates to typical undergraduate curriculum doesn’t sound like an easy task. Typical scientific research pushes the boundaries of our current knowledge, and in many undergrad bio courses, students are trying to learn the basics. Here at PSU I teach a lab in the biology introduction for bio majors that deals with a type of fungi that displays the results of meiosis (ask me if you want to know more about the fungal life cycle 😉 ). We irradiate the fungi with x-rays as part of the lab. We tell the students that they are participating in “real research” because we don’t exactly know what crossover frequencies they are going to get– but we do know the basics of what “should happen”. Would this count as the type of CURE the authors are advocating for, or does the end result have to be even more open-ended? I’d like to hear what others think of this question. The authors later state: “The goals of undergraduate science education include not just the acquisition of content knowledge, but also the opportunity for students to successfully engage in the practices and processes of science. Developing future scientists requires opportunities for students to engage in epistemic elements of science…” (Brownell & Kloser, 2015). This quote uses many of the situative words from our word list, and the idea of CUREs as allowing students to participate in authentic research reminds me of our discussion of legitimate peripheral participation.

In Hofstein and Lunetta’s paper on science ed in the 21st century, the section on social interactions in college laboratory settings resonated with me. The authors explain that the lab setting is a place for “students and their teachers engage in collaborative inquiry and to function as a classroom community of scientists” and that labs can foster “collaborative social relationships” (Hofstein and Lunetta, 2004). To me, so much of the lab experience in undergrad hinges on the social interactions in the lab– i.e. how the teacher interacts with students and fosters group collaboration. If a lab lacks a TA/instructor/teacher that is not good at this, the entire lab experience suffers. Many times an undergrad lab instructor is a PhD student who is required to teach to get their assistantship, and otherwise couldn’t care less about teaching. To be honest, I’ve got no idea about how to fix this issue. Combating this problem might be an impossible task, but I’d like to hear what others think of this idea.

Finally, the article on undergrad chem labs is very different than the types of papers we’ve read thus far. In the conclusion, the authors state: “For students who viewed the procedure as simple and straightforward to carry out resulting in a loss of autonomy, they overlooked the opportunity to consider the chemistry that afforded such simplicity in order to just adhere strictly to the procedure. For students who felt confident and familiar being in the laboratory, they, too, overlooked such an opportunity. Both of these groups of students made a conscious choice not to actively participate in learning in their laboratory courses” (Galloway et al, 2016, p. 235). Yikes! I get annoyed by undergrad science majors as much as the next guy, but this seems unfair. I don’t think the authors should assume the students are actively ignoring the chemistry and trying not to learn– maybe their instruction should be re-evaluated!

Brownell, S. E., & Kloser, M. J. (2015). Toward a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of course-based undergraduate research experiences in undergraduate biology. Studies in Higher Education, 40(3), 525–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1004234

Hofstein, A., & Lunetta, V. N. (2004). The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century. Science Education, 88(1), 28–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10106

Galloway, K. R., Malakpa, Z., & Bretz, S. L. (2016). Investigating Affective Experiences in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory: Students’ Perceptions of Control and Responsibility. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(2), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00737

A quote that stuck with me after reading the three articles on Discipline-Based Educational Research (DBER) for this week was “the education system must provide time and opportunity for teachers to interact with their students and also time for students to perform and reflect on complex, investigative tasks” (Hofstein & Lunetta, 2002, p. 47). All three articles focused on the importance that laboratories have in science education and the impact that they have on student learning. Yet as the quote suggests, and all three articles hint at, time and opportunities (such as accessibility to lab materials, teacher exposure, and technology) can limit the labs and types of labs that students perform in science classes.

Starting with the first reading by Brownell and Kloser (2015), the authors focus on course-based research experiences (CURE) that stress including science labs which provide authentic research experiences for students rather than traditional cookbook labs. One of the most interesting things from the article, I found, was table 1 (p. 528) which provides a continuum between these two types of labs. I often think of labs as either cookbook where students are told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, or as authentic activities where they have full autonomy and decision-making. However, this table suggests a continuum between these two types of labs, which made me start to realize that labs can be “non-cookbook” but also not fully “authentic.” One area I found interesting after reading this section is that the authors classify any non-cookbook lab as CURE. Specifically, I am curious to know why the “structured inquiry” lab type can be considered a type of CURE. While I see that the structure inquiry lab contains an analysis portion, that the cookbook lab does not, I had previously assumed that cookbook labs would require students to go over their results and answer a few questions based on them (even if they knew the answers or what would occur in the lab ahead of time). However, this analysis portion is the only difference between cookbook labs and this type of CURE lab, and I am curious to know what others think about this.

In regards to this reading, I was also curious as to how the K-12 science classes can transition from cookbook labs to those that support CURE. The authors hint at this idea when they state that K-12 science labs “focus on understanding the nature and epistemology of science results in a formulaic application of the five-step scientific method” (p. 530). I am interested in how the five CURE components (use of science practices, collaboration, iteration, discovery, and broadly relevant work) can be directly incorporated into K-12 science education, rather than being seen as almost a ‘stepping stone’ for authentic CURE later on. And more broadly looking at this topic, it is even feasible, with already content-packed K-12 science classes, to incorporate CURE?

The other reading that focused on undergraduate science education was written by Galloway, Malakpa, and Bretz (2015) and centered on affective learning in college chemistry laboratory classes. The authors define affective learning as “include[ing] the constructs of attitude, belief, motivation, confidence, anxiety, and values” (p. 228). This is an important consideration when looking at student learning as each student in a school experiences the same lectures and labs but can vary in the way he/she thinks and behaves depending on his/her affective experiences.  One area of this article I found interesting was that the authors provided a list of 12 affective words to current college students enrolled in chemistry labs and then asked them to mark the ones that described their experience in chemistry lab (both generally and after a specific lab) and the words that they would never use to describe their experience in chemistry lab. I understand that the authors included a list of such words to guide students’ responses to include affective terms, but I feel that doing so results in students having to mold how they would describe their affective experiences to fit the words provided. After the students choose the words that described how they felt about their lab, the authors then proceeding in asking students to provide specific examples to support the words they choose. This left me curious and confused as to why the authors did not allow students to state their own words to describe their afferent experiences, as doing so would be lead to more authentic responses.

Lastly, the article by Hofstein and Lunetta (2002) focused on lab learning in a general context where they defined labs “as learning experiences in which students interact with materials and/or with models to observe and understand the natural world” (p. 31). Describing it in this way reminds readers that labs can take various forms but that inquiry and a student-centered approach are major themes in any lab. One portion of the article that I found interesting was when Hofstein and Lunetta describe technology playing a role in labs. After reading their article, I can see how technology plays a role in lab activities such as by allowing teachers to monitor students’ work, allowing for collaboration and argumentation between students, and helping students to find significance in their data. While this was a newer area of research when the article was written in 2002, I am curious to find out ways in which technologies are being using within labs in science classroom over the past 16 years, especially in poorer school districts.

Works Cited

Brownell, S. E., & Kloser, M. J. (2015). Toward a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of course-based undergraduate research experiences in undergraduate biology. Studies in Higher Education, 40(3), 525–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1004234

Galloway, K. R., Malakpa, Z., & Bretz, S. L. (2016). Investigating Affective Experiences in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory: Students’ Perceptions of Control and Responsibility. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(2), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00737

Hofstein, A., & Lunetta, V. N. (2004). The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century. Science Education, 88(1), 28–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10106

I enjoyed the readings chosen for this week, particularly as this area of research is relevant to our own experiences during tertiary study and I had not read widely on the subject prior.

Galloway, Malakpa, & Bretz (2015) consider how the affective experiences of students influence learning within laboratory settings.  I agree with the authors in that learning cannot only be considered from a cognitive and psychomotor approach, that affective and emotional responses will contribute to meaningful learning. But, I can see the methodology of this study as being limiting. The ineffective pilot study described that preceded creation of the word list (Figure 3. p.230) made me wonder what questions had been asked of students initially. Having students circle words may be effective at getting the data that the researchers want to see and is easily analyzed, but does it truly reflect affective responses? These words seemed to automate student ideas, that were ironically, representing to what degree of control they (the students) felt they had within laboratory classes. As undergraduates, surely they can communicate, using their own words, how they felt about various instances on the video. I do wonder how this study could be constructed differently, in order to meet research objectives and perhaps gain a better depth of student responses.

Hofstein and Lunetta (2004) provided a thorough summary on laboratory learning.  This was a very comprehensive literature review which provided some obvious, and other not so obvious, inhibitors to successful learning in the school science laboratory. These factors included questioning the value of widely used ‘cookbook’ lists of tasks for students to undertake which fail to make students think about the larger purpose, objective or sequence of the tasks to achieve a desired outcome, and the issue of access regarding resources (time, space, technology). These factors seemed fairly obvious in regards to limiting the educational value of laboratory learning environments. However, less obvious, is how we can overcome what Hofstein and Lunetta (2004) consider the inhibitors involving teaching and administrative education, how to teach teachers better in order to design more student centered and inquiry driven research. After reading this paper, I thought about how my laboratory experience during high school and college had influenced my education, particularly in leading me to pursue biology.  I can honestly say that it did not help whatsoever. I remember structured labs in high school as being a formality and largely unproductive, I could actually visualize why this was the case when I the authors argued, ‘data gathered in many countries has continued to suggest that teachers spend large portions of laboratory time in managerial functions, not in soliciting and probing ideas or in teaching that challenges students ideas, encouraging them to consider and test alternative hypothesis…’ (p.44). My laboratory classes were largely about damage control, making the best of equipment that had seen too many rotations of the earth around the sun, trying to finish a worksheet and copying the persons data who had ‘gotten it right’ so that we could hand in a lab report to pass. During early college, our lab class would only finish when we had obtained the correct numerical value according to a software program or time ran out after 3.5 hours. It wasn’t until my senior year did our labs involve designing and conducting our own research and even then, this experience was constrained by budget and what was feasible for the time and interest of our professor. The reason I have described these situations is that even when I undertook labs that allowed for inquiry and testing hypothesis, I found that it was still not truly legitimate and this was at a senior college level. In contrast, I was also a part of a research lab group that worked essentially as data collectors, and then editors for a manuscript that our professor was publishing. Even though this time was spent doing a lot of repetitive tasks (counting cells, filling in data tables etc.) I received so much more out of this time because I could see the importance of this work to something bigger than a grade or test result. Our work was needed in a legitimate science context. I was, very fortunate, to of had this opportunity, but it has made me consider that labs as they exist now, probably wouldn’t necessarily improve if the teacher attends PD’s or the technology updated, or the student can make up a hypothesis and test it, because at the end of the day those methods of inquiry are still fairly predetermined and predictable based on the scope of the class. Brownell and Kloser (2015) address these circumstances with their work on CUREs, by ‘blending aspects of teaching and research’ university professors are able to create laboratory learning environments for students to participate in a more authentic form of scientific practice (p.537).  This method aims to address the issues identified by Hofstein and Lunetta (2004), particularly in removing the ‘cook-book’ lab in favor of an educative scenario where scientific practices involving thinking, communicating, and using tools in a way that is more like a scientist, are undertaken by the student. This method, in theory, appears an excellent solution to the issues of limited research assistant positions within a large R1 institution with hundreds of students in classes, and conversely, smaller teaching schools with reduced research focus. I do wonder whether CUREs are any different from senior capstone projects and independent study courses that are offered. Ideally CUREs would be implemented from an early year level, but during the initial years of a degree, foundational classes place a far greater amount of time on content knowledge and allot trivial time, and marks, for labs. If a CURE replaced the traditional laboratory requirement of a course, would this proportion of time be sufficient to undertake ‘in-depth’ meaningful research? The ability of a CURE to give meaningful learning opportunities for students ultimately lies with the professors willingness to adopt this form of teaching. I see the ideology of a CURE being successful, but worry that its implementation may just result in undergraduate students becoming the labor behind a professor’s research lab, ie. conducting repetitive data entry or other tasks that won’t necessarily lead to a meaningful teaching experience. Ensuring appropriate implementation of this kind of intervention would be just as important, and complex, as developing the framework of the theory itself

Works Cited:

• Brownell, S. E., & Kloser, M. J. (2015). Toward a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of course-based undergraduate research experiences in undergraduate biology. Studies in Higher Education, 40(3), 525–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1004234
• Galloway, K. R., Malakpa, Z., & Bretz, S. L. (2015). Investigating Affective Experiences in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory: Students’ Perceptions of Control and Responsibility. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(2), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00737
• Hofstein, A., & Lunetta, V. N. (2004). The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century. Science Education, 88(1), 28–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10106

This week’s readings brought considerations about learning science as a discipline front and center. The articles by Brownell and Kloser (2015) and Galloway, Malakpa, and Bretz (2016), the authors drew upon ideas from the cognitive camp on learning. The authors of the literature review detailed both perspectives. However, what I found most interesting was how once students exit K-12 environments, the idea of ‘what counts’ as science may shift dramatically and the thoughts of those who think about these students’ learning do as well. With this said, these articles left me wondering what the roles of laboratory experiences are in science education and science more broadly.

Brownell and Kloser (2015) detail a way to evaluate course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs.) In fact, without knowing it at the time, in my semester of Bio 220W here at Penn State, I participated in research being conducted by faculty about anole lizards, I even had the chance to TA for this course while the same project was happening. As the authors assume, I did learn a lot in this course, however, I do not know if this learning was the result of the fact that I participated in a CURE or that my learning was any different than any other class. I will also state that this experience was not identical to the ideal CURE as described by Brownell and Kloser (2015).

According to Brownell and Kloser (2015), there are three sets of outcomes of CUREs: course, student, and faculty. I was fascinated by what they perceived as outcomes purely for faculty and students as these outcomes were not connected to actual learning outcomes. For students, the authors defined outcomes as being interest, self-efficacy, and career options. Interest and self-efficacy focused exclusively on science as a practice, mainly are they interested in and able to do inquiry on their own? To create these defined outcomes, the authors detailed general categories to define embodiments of a CURE that are easily accepted in all science fields, yet they did little to actually connect these features to learning outside of saying, “if we do this, students will learn this.” Overall, they assume that if you do engage a CURE you will learn science better. Additionally, the idea that a course is designed to increase job prospects is troubling to me because it perpetuates the idea that students are in school merely to obtain a job; I wonder what this means in terms of their learning goals and how they think about science as an enterprise? What does this say about science that courses are simply designed to improve job prospects? What is it about this experience that makes it a quality job prospect enhancer? How does it actually translate to getting a job or improving job performance? Finally, I will state that the outcomes for students and through the course are completely tainted by the mere fact that faculty will gain grants and publications from the course. This raises so many ethical questions for me about the nature of schooling, learning, and science. I wonder what this means for how students are enculturated into science and how framing science in this way might actually alienate students and produce toxic environments for learning?

Affective responses are important to consider in labs because as Galloway, Malakpa, and Betz (2016) explain, laboratory experiences are loaded with emotions for students. Unfortunately, I question if they were able to properly encapsulate the feelings of the students in their study because of how the authors limited the affective responses students were allowed to have. In fact, I felt a lot of the interpretations they made within their findings were somewhat of a stretch because they start from a position of stating, “One challenge with interviews is that students may not possess the vocabulary to precisely describe their experiences” (p. 227). This statement is deficit oriented and assumes students cannot describe what they are experiencing, in fact, I wonder, “what is it about these researchers (and maybe science) that students are not perceived to be capable of expressing themselves, or is it that one is only allowed to experience certain emotions in science?” Moving beyond this aspect of the research however, I do believe feelings matter in laboratories. When reading about the “cognitive unbalance” students experience, I could completely relate, and preparing instructors to directly support students through and designing curriculum to support students in navigating this experience is crucial. Additionally, many of the most common answers in their study were things I would also agree to; my chemistry labs were often interesting, challenging, and frustrating. I would also say they were not creative or inspired. However, I felt the authors attributing certain affective responses and interpreting certain statements to lacking “tenacity” (p. 234) as a result of interview data about “lacking control” to be irresponsible. Rather than thinking about what their statements mean for the learning environment and learning, they made direct connections between these affective responses and learning/other affective attributes like “tenacity.” This was an odd choice by the authors, and again, made me wonder what this says about the researchers (or potentially science) that learning = tenacity. In the end though, the authors make valuable assertions about needing to think about how laboratories are constructed because of the implications on learning, I just felt that the connections to learning were methodologically weak in this study and socially irresponsible.

The final article took a perspective I found interesting as Hofstein and Luetta simply framed their article around “laboratories.” Overall, because of the literature review nature of this article, I have little to state other than the fact that this article used more educational research and ideas that are at the core of science education. Unlike the other authors, I felt Hofstein and Lunetta broadened what “counts as labs.” They spoke about computers and skills more specifically. In fact, it made me wonder how all classrooms can simply be “laboratories” where inquiry happens. The previous mentioned authors, I would surmise, would state that labs only happen where innovation is occurring (or at least Brownell and Kloser would.) Instead, under Hostein and Lunetta’s conception, labs are places of “inquiry.” This inquiry takes the same form of labs described in the previous places, but acknowledges that schools can mirror actual science labs while also having features that are exclusive to education such as pushing students to be more metacognitive or explicitly focusing on argumentation. In Brownell and Kloser’s (2015) conceptions, these features are derived from simply participating in a CURE, and for Galloway et al. (2016), they might attribute this learning to students “taking control of their learning” rather than being guided by a teacher and other peers.

This week exemplifies why learning needs to be considered deeply when thinking about course design and the learning of science. Brownell and Kloser (2015) fell into a trap of assuming a context would inherently enhance learning while Galloway et al. (2016) attribute affective aspects of an experience directly to attributes that indicate learning to make claims about experiences. While colloquially it is fine to discuss learning in these ways, but it is important to deeply consider how each of these features are connected to learning. Yes, some of the ideas found within the articles were present in Hofstein and Lunetta’s literature review as I previously stated, but if the authors had allowed some of the ideas within that article to be front and center, building a framework from these ideas explicitly, without making large assumptions about learning, the products they produced would have been significantly more robust in my opinion.

Brownell, S. E., & Kloser, M. J. (2015). Toward a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of course-based undergraduate research experiences in undergraduate biology. Studies in Higher Education, 40(3), 525–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1004234

Galloway, K. R., Malakpa, Z., & Bretz, S. L. (2016). Investigating Affective Experiences in the Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory: Students’ Perceptions of Control and Responsibility. Journal of Chemical Education, 93(2), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00737

Hofstein, A., & Lunetta, V. N. (2004). The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century. Science Education, 88(1), 28–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10106

This week’s readings filled more gaps in our understanding of the learning theories that we have studied before while providing examples of how to apply those theories in the classroom. The first article by Songer and Kali described the relationship between science teaching and learning theories (2014). The authors began with a discussion of the two types of scientific knowledge, content and scientific thinking, before moving into a discussion of how the focus has changed from the former to the latter (p 567). I thought their example of this change, shown in table 28.1 seemed a little odd considering that both standards showed the same focuses only worded slightly differently. I also thought that it was a bit odd that they chose to speak of “tentative evidence” of better qualitative outcomes using the teaching technique of using blended standards (p. 569). The authors also spoke of moving away from a format of lectures and cookbook labs (p. 570). I think that no matter what version of learning philosophy a person subscribes to that they would agree that the old method of integrating labs into science courses could stand with some improvement.

The next article by DiSessa reviewed the recent movements within the field of conceptual change (2014). The author discussed what concept change means, what the definition of a concept is and the history of concept change theory. One aspect of this article that I found interesting was the idea of theory theory. The author refers to other researchers who believe that there are parallels between children’s theories and those of scientists. One example that was given was from the work of McCloskey regarding Newtonian physics. I would like to know more about the argument that these researchers are trying to make (p 96). I could see how a child’s theory might match those of an ancient researcher but not how those theories would relate to modern scientific thought.

The final article, by Collins and Kapur, offers yet another view on the topic of cognitive apprenticeship (2015). The authors begin the chapter by defining the term and discussing its origin. The aspect of this article that I found most interesting was that if finally showed a clear framework for how to apply this method in a teaching environment. Other article that we have read dealt with the idea from a theoretical standpoint rather than a practical one. This article also did a good job of clarifying what is meant by apprenticeship and making it clear that the teaching application is not meant to be applied in such a literal manner. In other words, teaching physics does not require the presence of a physicist or an attempt to teach students to think as little proto-physicists.

References

DiSessa, A. A. (2014). A history of conceptual change research: Threads and fault lines.

Songer, N. B., & Kali, Y. (2014). Science education and the learning sciences as coevolving species. In The cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 565-586).

I found the coevolution analogy useful in describing the relationship between science education and the learning sciences (maybe because of my bio nerd background). In this particular chapter, the authors explain 2 types of scientific knowledge– the first being scientific processes, or “skills obtained and practiced by scientists when they do scientific work”, and the second being content knowledge (Songer & Kali, 2014, p. 567). They then go on to discuss that these two types of knowledge should be integrated or blended, so that scientific practices become more prevalent in classrooms. As I read, at first I thought that the authors were arguing for a more situated view of learning in science classrooms. However, after looking more closely at their language and thinking back to our discussion last week, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Scientific practices are considered a type of knowledge that needs to be learned in addition to other types of knowledge. To me, this seemed like a very cognitivist way of thinking about this idea– I am interested to see what others think of this. However, the whole chapter isn’t like this. In the Science Knowledge is Situated and Learned Socially section, the authors state: “occurrences that were typically referred to as noise in a cognitive-focused research (e.g. unintended side conversations between students) are considered data in sociocultural research” (Songer & Kali, 2014, p. 576). This quote helped me to think about how the situative and cognitive theories differ in what is significant when observing student learning in a classroom. The chapter also discusses the shift from science for “future scientists” to science to create literate members of society. Additionally, it discusses the use of SSIs such as climate change as contexts for situated learning.  If “literate citizens” is the culture we are trying to enculturate students into, it makes sense to use relevant issues in society that literate citizens engage with in their lives.

In diSessa’s chapter on conceptual change (2014), I found the discussion of conceptual change in the biology domain interesting. diSessa discusses research involving biological knowledge in children and explains that children think about animals using a naive theory that animals are goal-directed, which is different than the way scientists classify animals, and a programs that “isolated children’s sensitivity to biological phenomena” (diSessa, 2014, p. 97). As I read, I wondered why it was these changes occurred in the children– what about the program changed children’s ideas? To me, the reason for the change in children’s conceptions seems to come from a change in a way of thinking about animals. It makes sense that children would have a specific view of animals if their exposure to animals comes from zoos and children’s books– that is the culture in which they are members. If you expose them to a scientific way of thinking then they will begin pick up a scientific view of animal classification (this example seemed much more situative than cognitive to me).

Collins and Kapur’s chapter on Cognitive Apprenticeship (2014) further clarified aspects of cognitive apprenticeship and the sitative camp that I was still unsure about. I found table 6.1 useful in elaborating on the sorts of “things” the situative view is concerned with– up until this point we have really only discussed the broad idea of practices and this chapter helped to clarify more details into what exactly this looks like. Domain knowledge is only one small portion of the whole picture and “domain knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for expert performance” (Collins & Kapur, 2014, p. 111). I found the discussion of Learning Strategies interesting, as it deals with strategies concerned with how to learn domain knowledge. Thinking of learning content as a series of strategies that can be learned and that “experts apply strategies without being consciously aware of exactly what they are doing” (p. 113) helped me to clarify the idea of cognitive tools in cognitive apprenticeship.

Collins, A., & Kapur, M. (2014). Cognitive apprenticeship. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 109–127). Cambridge University Press.

DiSessa, A. (2014). A History of Conceptual Change Research. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 88–108). Cambridge University Press.

Songer, N., & Kali, Y. (2014). Science Education and the Learning Sciences as Coevolving Species. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 697–722). Cambridge University Press.

The dichotomy of vocabulary between cognitivists and situatists was thrown into stark contrast while discussing the issue of transfer. The question I kept coming back to is what the situatists consider to be learning. In trying to qualify three factors that are important for transfer to happen, Engle (2014) first considers the extent to which students were “actively involved enough in learning” in order to have “actually learned something that they could have used later” (p. 454). Later, Engel mentions that content in the “common ground” is available to be “potentially appropriated by individuals” (p. 455). Judging by the latter statement, appropriation of content is seen as (part of) learning and the extent of this appropriation is determined by active participation and contribution to the common ground. As soon as the situatist perspective talks about content, it raises the question of whether this content is tied in to their requirements of activity being the crux of learning. In the case of appropriation, what is the status of the content between situations? Everytime I think of this question, I find myself slipping into unforgiven cognitive words. This perspective also seems to imply that the extent of transfer (of content) is determined by extent of participation in creating the content. I don’t see how this relation works. This assumes that participation is at the crux of understanding which is not necessarily true although it is a very situative statement to make. ‘Silent’ participations could also lead to a high level of appropriation

The idea of intercontextuality is interesting. The notion of intercontextuality and the design of environments to support it could have implications for cognitive apprenticeships if we design environments that support intercontextual transfer between learning environments and real world contexts. The underlying idea is to frame the situation in such a way that transfer occurs. To facilitate this process, Engel redefines transfer to apply to social groups. This bothers me a little. By redefining transfer for a group, are we really talking about the same notion? Primarily, trasnfer is also concerned with how activities or ‘knowledge’ in one social setting transfers into another social setting. With the redefinition and the study in the article,  the social setting remains the same, only the content of the activity, (not even the structures of the activity) is changed. How legitimate is this as an issue of transfer? From a cognitivist point of view, these are two different scenarios. The two instances studied by the situatists to show transfer really don’t capture the depth of what transfer is supposed to do. It almost feels like the study is analysing the understanding of a broad concept that is being abstracted from one example and applied to the other (whales to mud-skippers). There is a very narrow variation between the two situations. I think the situatist account should broaden the differences and then try and explain transfer in terms of structural similarities between the two situations.

They are learning macrocausal explanations through a situative activity. Can they switch macrocausal explanation schemes to a situation that doesn’t involve speciation, to a different social context? That is a much broader question to ask and one that I think the situatists won’t be able to answer at the moment. This article sidesteps the question of how transfer can happen in a broader context by framing the set of activities to facilitate it. There is also a continued emphasis on how framing of the two situations can help facilitate transfer but it would be interesting to see how the burden of transfer is carried by the students when they determine when to apply previously learnt knowledge.

I think there is a better way to facilitate transfer from the situatists perspective and this is something I’d like to think about further. If learning is about dealing with different situations, we are looking to create situations in the classroom that students can transfer from. The creation of intercontextuality can’t be suitably generalised to covers all scenarios that students are typically expected to encounter. A more fruitful approach could be to try and expose the underlying structural features of the activity that students are engaged in, in the classroom. If students are exposed to this and are taught to identify the structure of situations in general, then it can be fairly expected that students can apply material and ways of participation that were acquired in one situation and transfer it to another situation with structural similarities. I’m not sure about the validity of this argument as it may not be possible to characterise the structure of situations in the way that is necessary for students to be able to generalise these structures. But intentionally framing situations that are extremely similar and showing that students who do well in one do well in the other doesn’t seem to me to be an example of transfer.

References:

Engle, R. A., Journal, T., Sciences, L., & Taylor, P. (2014). Framing Interactions to Foster Generative Learning : A Situative Explanation of Transfer in a Community of Learners Classroom All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Framing Interactions to Foster Generative Learning : A Situative Explanation of Tra, 15(4), 451–498.

The readings for this week surprised me. I was expecting them to link to the previous learning theories that we have discussed in class, which they did, but they also started to bring in ideas that we have not previously mentioned so far such as technology and policy makers determining learning standards. Having a foundation on conceptual change and cognitive apprenticeship definitely helped with the readings this week, and I have included a few interesting points that I found from each of the readings below in addition to some areas that I had difficulty with and questions on.

The first reading, a chapter written by Songer and Kali (2014), discusses how science education and the learning sciences are intertwined by focusing on four areas of educational scholarship that have influenced both science education and the learning sciences. I found their section on fostering blended science knowledge very interesting as it stresses the importance of transitioning from “lectures and cookbook labs to interactive, guided instructional activities and pedagogies that build on prior instruction” (p.. 573). This part of the article, I felt, directly relates to the teaching that I have observed during my pre-student teaching. From talking to classmates, my mentor teacher, and looking back at my own middle school science class experiences, we remember science class consisting of being lectured to, completing in-class worksheets and activities, and doing labs where we were told exactly what and when do/add something (i.e. almost like a robot). However, when I went to my pre-student teaching classroom that uses the ambitious science teaching framework, I saw a very different science classroom. The teacher would ask students about their prior knowledge, question how students’ prior knowledge influenced their proposed ideas and hypothesis, and have students create their own lab to test an idea rather than being given step-by-step lab instructions. Teaching in this way illustrates the idea that Songer and Kali (2014) argue for above, but also allows students to develop deeper conceptual understanding of the material being taught. Rather than being treated as “robots”, students in this environment participate in higher-order thinking activities by collecting their own data, analyzing their data through graphing, and adding the knowledge learned from a lab to their current model explaining how a phenomenon occurs, allowing for what they term as “blended science knowledge.” Another section of the chapter written by Songer and Kali (2014) that I found interesting was when they discuss how technology can play a role in supporting complex thinking in science. Having a personal interest in technology integration within the science classroom, I saw that technology (such as computer programs, web activities, and videos) was not used as much as it could have in my student teaching experiences to foster this blended science knowledge. Students solely used Chromebooks to write in online journals, input their data into online forums, and complete online assessments. I feel that using technology in this way did not really foster blended science knowledge, but I am curious see if others think this also. Or how can technology can be used to do foster this knowledge?

On the lines of discussing technology, the third reading by Collins and Kapur (2014) mentioned that technology can aid in cognitive apprenticeship as seen through it encouraging students to reflect on their performances and that it can scaffold situated learning through computer-based environments (important themes they argue in cognitive apprenticeship research). More broadly though, I appreciated that Collins and Kapur spent time distinguishing between traditional and cognitive apprenticeship. When initially reading about cognitive apprenticeship in the Brown, Collins, and Duigid (1989) article, I kept thinking about cognitive apprenticeship in terms of a the traditional apprenticeship, i.e. a physical process where a mentor teaches an individual the skills he/she needs to complete a task, rather than providing learners techniques and knowledge that they can apply to various settings. I was confused, though, on one area of the paper where Collins and Kapur (2014) classify situated learning as a theme in cognitive apprenticeship research. From the “Filling in the Gaps” readings two weeks back, we (tried) to differentiate between these two learning theories. I came out of that class somewhat understanding that cognitive apprenticeship focuses more on the thinking/individual cognitive aspect of learning where a social component does occur and situated learning focuses more on the norms and practices of a community or the bigger behaviors in a community. From this reading by Collins and Kapur (2014), I was further confused on differentiating between the two theories because it seems like they combine the two together with cognitive apprenticeship extending situated learning to more diverse and complex settings. Did anyone else find this? Or if not, can you help me to differentiate between the two?

Lastly, the chapter by diSessa (2014) was more of a historical writing on conceptual change than a theory paper. This reading was the most difficult out of the three for me, but I was able to gather from reading it that even within the cognitivist perspective, there is debate about the theory of conceptual change with not one model being fully agreed upon. I agree with diSessa’s discussion on prior knowledge and how we, as future educators, should not just have students state their current knowledge and then have them disregard it but “convince[ing] them to accept the scientifically correct conceptualization” (p. 89).  I was extremely confused on the part of the chapter that focused on the Kuhn (coherence) and Toulmin (fragmentation) debate and hope that through the class discussion this week, I can get a better understanding on this. If anyone can help me out with this section, that would be greatly appreciated!

Works Cited

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42.

Collins, A., & Kapur, M. (2014). Cognitive apprenticeship. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 109–127). Cambridge University Press.

DiSessa, A. A. (2014). A History of Conceptual Change Research. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 88–108). Cambridge University Press.

Songer, N. B., & Kali, Y. (2014). Science Education and the Learning Sciences as Coevolving Species. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 697–722). Cambridge University Press.