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

Learning Progressions is a topic that I have not heard much about until reading the articles from this week.  I do like the overall idea that students can build on the information that they learn, and develop a more comprehensive understanding.  If I understood the articles correctly, I took away that learning progressions are almost like a trajectory the students can follow to arrive at a level of understanding that someone defines as appropriate. The theoretical significance of a “learning progression” is to develop an idea that could lead students to become scientifically literate.  In the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, the Editorial by Duncan et al., highlighted many interesting, and what I would even deem controversial, aspects of learning progressions.  The first being what role does the teacher and other instructional interventions play in the success of a learning progression?  On page 608 Duncan et al. stated, “The question of how intimately linked curriculum and instruction are to progression also remains open.  On one hand, we noted in our definition that LPs are not developmentally inevitable and depend on targeted instruction; on the other hand, LPs are essentially theoretical constructs that are not intended to be tied to a specific instructional intervention.  The articles in this issue differ in regard to the emphasis they place on instruction and whether or not instructional interventions are necessary for the empirical validation of the progression.”  I wonder myself how greatly learning progressions depend on the work (ex. scaffolding and  other instructional measures) teachers perform to get their students to understand the material.  It also makes me wonder how else would the learner get to the next level?

On page 606-607 Duncan et al. also stated, “Second, these progressions are bounded by an upper anchor describing what students are expected to know and be able to do by the end of the progression; this anchor is informed by analyses of the domain as well as societal expectations.”  This being said, if the society standards are a major factor to the success of a learning progression, at what level in society would this be defined? Would it be by what the teacher deemed the society standard, or would it be at a higher level–state or national? 

I found the Steedle and Shavelson article titled Supporting Valid Interpretations of Learning Progression Level Diagnosis useful to have a better understanding of the complications with learning progressions.  Although learning progressions are theoretically a great idea, the assessment potentially used to validate the success of learning progression is tricky to perform.  Steedle and Shavelson pointed out that particular points of a learning progression do not always allow for a specific analysis.  After reading this article I felt a bit skeptic about learning progressions as a tool to be used in the classroom.  If specific analysis is too difficult to do with the learning progression, would this tool be somewhat unfair to be practiced in classrooms or even implemented on a standard basis?  

The question previously asked was further justified by what I read in the Mark Wilson article. As Wilson noted  on page 716 in the article titled Measuring Progressions: Assessment Structures Underlying a Learning Progression, “Devising means of measuring a student’s location within or along a learning progression is a crucial step in advancing the scientific study of learning progressions, and for finding educationally useful applications of the idea.”  The idea of a construct map, which would be a tool used to help researchers understand how assessment tools can be related to cognition.  I found Wilson to be easy to read, and I thought the metaphor provided to understand the relationship between learning progressions and assessment thoughtful and helpful.  On page 717 Wilson stated, “In order to illustrate certain aspects of the relationship between learning progressions and assessment, I will use a visual metaphor that superimposes images of construct maps on an image of a learning progression. This image of the learning progression is shown in Figure 1, where the successive layers of the ”thought clouds” are intended to represent the successive layers of sophistication of the student’s thinking, and the increase in the cloud’s size is intended to indicate that the thoughts become more sophisticated later in the sequence (e.g., they have wider applicability later in the sequence). The person in the picture is a someone (a science educator, a science education researcher, an assessment developer?) who is thinking about student thinking. In other circumstances (e.g., Wilson, 2005), I have called this person the ”measurer,” though not here, as the ideas being examined in the article are mainly at an early point in the development of assessments, focusing on the first of the building blocks. It is important to recall that this learning progression is in the researcher’s thoughts, and that it represents a hypothesis about the students’ thoughts that will be examined empirically, eventually.”  Overall, I thought Wilson provided a good building block for a tool that could be potentially used to give more grounding to an assessment. 

Finally, the Songer et al. article titled How and When Does Complex Reasoning Occur?  Empiracally Driven Development of a Learning Progression Focused on Complex Reasoning about Biodiversity was an article that showed the application of a three year learning progression.  I thought the overall goal of these researchers was attention-grabbing, because they were motivated by the fact that an American students are not on a competitive scientific level of understanding that international science learners are at.  I thought that Songer et al. made a good point that the definition of learning progressions is oversimplified. A learning progression is not strictly content knowledge, but there is a level of inquiry that is developing as well that must be included throughout the progression.  Songer et al. also raised a good point about the evaluation of a successful learning progression.  On page 611 they argued that neither the content or inquiry portion of a learning progression could be evaluated directly, but rather they are just resources that could be empirically evaluated.  

Overall, I excited to be able to discuss these articles in class next week.  I guess after completing these readings I am still at a loss for how the assessment and evaluation of learning progressions can take place (which seems to be the question that everyone is asking)? 

I just want to start off by saying “THANK YOU!” to the authors for giving us their definition of argumentation (a verbal, social, and rational activity aimed at convincing a reasonable critic of the acceptability of a standpoint by putting forward a constellation of propositions justifying or refuting the proposition expressed in the standpoint) in literally the second paragraph of the entire paper (pg 231).  That being said, this article seemed like the full version of what was apparently an abridged version we read from the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. The big thing about this article was the model for how student argumentation and questioning occur. I thought the model was a good start for describing the process of student questioning. There are some things that the model might not be able to explain, and the authors mentioned that there is a “Path 0” in which the student doesn’t find the topic perplexing enough or interesting enough to come up with questions. I felt that maybe the puzzlement – self-question – self explanation/argument part of pathway 2 should be an iterative process similar to part of pathway 3. I don’t think student thinking in this pathway always occurs in the same sequence.

Overall, I guess there isn’t much to talk about with this article other than the model, since we’ve seen everything else before. I still like their concept the second time around, so I guess that says something.  One thing that I found a little annoying was the many times the phrases “Our hypothesis is….” or “We hypothesize….” appears in the article. Surely they have the capacity to think of some other way to say this.

            The articles within the Journal of the Learning Sciences both emphasized the significance of social interaction when it comes to learning.

Although the article published by Chin and Osborne is very similar to the article that was published in Journal of Research in Science Teaching, I found that I gained a new appreciation for the possible significance and effectiveness of argumentation in the classroom in reading the article for essentially the second time. Providing the students with the opportunity to argue with themselves internally and then to express their opinions with the members of a group is something that I can see as being beneficial to many students. The conclusion of this study is something that I believe is of great significance: “What this study suggests, however, is that the use of questions and the development of an argument are mutually symbiotic and interdependent and that both activities are fundamental to productive discourse and scaffolding conceptual change” (280). During the readings that we have completed throughout the past few weeks, we have read about the importance of the use of questions (specifically in the articles read regarding inquiry). Providing students with these questions, in turn, enables them to develop their own ideas regarding the topic and to express these ideas with their fellow classmates. I think that this task is an extremely difficult one to accomplish effectively; however, if done correctly for a particular classroom, I believe that the benefits for conceptual change can be tremendous. Just as a little side note – I don’t think that I agree with the findings of this study entirely because it was based on a select number of students from select schools in specific countries. In order to truly analyze the effectiveness of argumentation and how it can be employed in a classroom, a more random sampling of schools would need to be analyzed.

The article by Barton et al., I was shocked by the enthusiasm expressed by some of the youth participating in this research project. In this study, the adolescents played the role of experts and created their own data by interviewing members of society. In a sense, these adolescents were participating in a form of authentic apprenticeship. I have struggled to construct ideas about how a student could experience authentic apprenticeship since first reading about it earlier this semester. Now, it looks like I have a concrete example to which I may be able to provide the label. In this research assignment, the youth were given the task of interviewing the members of society to collect a body of evidence and then they were to analyze it and present their findings in a video. Boss, a participant that did not express overwhelming enthusiasm for participating in the study, was thrilled that she was going to be able to sound like a real scientist in the video presentation. This made me think that providing students with the opportunity to experience something in an authentic way, may increase student enthusiasm and overall participation. Students get to participate in something that is REAL, instead of just sitting in a classroom, taking notes. Although I think that it can be very challenging to provide students with opportunities to authentically experience something because resources are often quite limited, this is something that I would consider utilizing in my future classroom (if possible that is). 

This week’s readings came from the Journal of the Learning Sciences. The Calabrese et al. article titled We Be Burnin’! Agency, Identity, and Science Learning was something very unique to anything that we have read this semester.  Although it still took on the social/situated view of learning, it contained an element that made it stand out amongst the other readings: approachability.  After completing the reading, I thought to myself that this was the first reading where I feel as though the researches tried to make science approachable and something that the students could develop an interest in.  Calabrese et al. highlighted how many students come into science class with preconceived notions that are derived from social implications defined by their peers.  Rather than overlooking this disconnect, the researchers explained their reasoning for how science can be approached in a community learning style that may alleviate this problem.  When I first started to read the article I was confused by what the authors were discussing when they spoke of an agency.  From what I understood and what is displayed in the diagram on page 193, an agency is a relationship that occurs between a learner’s identity and the figured worlds that are created during a social experience. On page 194 it states, “One of the primary claims made in this study is that students who aspire for scientific competence while not desiring to take on aspects of the identities associated with membership in school science communities often face difficulties an even school failure.  A learner’s identity is something that is so heavily influenced by the cues that they pick up on, and by having students develop an identity that is responsive to a learning environment then they could have a much richer learning experience. 

On page 189 it states, “It makes sense then that the vast majority of such studies in learning in informal settings have tended to group along at least three important and related trajectories; the nature of the practice and/or the task, such as situational urgency (Stevens et al., 2006) or applied nature (Bell, Bricker, Lee, Reeve, & Zimmerman, 2006); the broader network of resources available to engage the practice or task, such as access to experts, tools ,and positions (Nasir, Warren, Rosebery & Lee, 2009); and the structure that foster and legitimize practice-based identities and positioning (Nasir & Hand, 2008; Rahm, 2008).”  I thought that this was a good summary of how learning occurs informally/situationally.  I would like to look back at the past readings we did and see if they follow this type of structure. 

Lastly, I found the idea of vertical and horizontal dimensions of learning interesting as well.  Instead of just learning something to mature your understanding to master it (vertical), there is a dimension of learning that has to do with developing across a community.  With these different dimensions an individual can use many resources and tools to learn. In this research experiment I liked that the learners seemed to be able to identify their place in a learning situation, making them more open to learning and discovery.  They were given the opportunities to make this project a worthwhile experience, contacting many people throughout the community while still keeping their own data collection and reasoning as a major source of knowledge.  After reading this it confirmed for me that science can and should be a social interaction that takes place.  Overall, I think that making science approachable to students is a task that educators need to accomplish before students can be confident and comfortable in an environment to learn.   

From these JSTE readings and the various class discussion both in 552 and other classes, I get the feeling that the age of inquiry is imminent. I thought it spoke volumes that JSTE had at least three articles, all published within a 6 month period of each other, pertaining to ways to measure/evaluate/evoke inquiry in classrooms. The first article I read was Lustick’s about focus questions, and I thought it gave so much good advice, especially about designing questions that will elicit more response from students.  According to Lustick, research indicates that “an effective question engages students and promotes a process of sustained reasoning considered crucial in the development of understanding” (pg 496). What I liked was that he then went on to explain various types of questions (dictionary, encyclopedic, textbook, google, and cutting edge) and their relative values. Lustick also presented his 4 dimension framework for designing questions: content, curriculum, context, and cognition (I almost felt he should give this a nickname – the 4 C’s or something similar). What I felt was the most valuable part of the article for me was when he explained what kinds of questions fulfilled his four dimensions and when he also gave examples and explanations of questions that didn’t fully comply with the dimensions.
The next article I read was the Dolan and Grady article about their work to create a tool to rate students complexity of thinking during inquiry exercises. I thought that what they described as their research goal was admirable, although I felt that it was a little unclear what the final tool was or how someone unfamiliar with their research would use it. I would be very interested to see how their tool works in class rooms that didn’t present the optimum conditions for inquiry, especially since it seemed that the classrooms they identified as being almost ideal environments seem to score average or slightly above average at best.
My final article was the Campbell, Abd-Hamid, and Chapman piece about their process for developing an instrument to determine both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of inquiry.  The main thing I took away from this article was emphasis on inquiry  and the importance of having tools/apparatus to determine how well you’re teaching what you think you are.

            As expected based on the abstracts, each of these articles emphasized the role of scientific inquiry within the classroom environment. Each of the articles either explicitly or implicitly appeared to build the foundation for the research upon a situated perspective to learning. Even though scientific inquiry was the main focus of each, each article provided me with different approaches to looking at how to utilize it in the classroom. I believe that inquiry is a very effective technique, and although I am not entirely sure that I agree with everything presented in these articles, they did provide some empirical evidence to strengthen my belief in the effectiveness of inquiry-based instruction. 

            Lustick focused on the importance of using scientific questions to serve as the core foundation for learning. The core questions, developed by the instructor, would encourage the students to use their prior knowledge, experiences, and conceptions to increase their understanding of the scientific content. Lustick clearly stated that using “dictionary questions” would not encourage the students to think. Instead, he believed that teachers should focus on developing divergent questions that don’t necessarily lend themselves to a particular answer. I think that providing students with questions that allow them to utilize critical thinking skills may be beneficial to the classroom; students are learning more than just the information. Instead, they are learning how to think through a question and develop a grounded and well-supported answer. They are reasoning through the abstract to establish something that may feel more concrete to them because they immersed themselves in the subject matter (as opposed to merely memorizing like many students do today). I believe that focusing conversation through questions is beneficial to students, but how can someone create a question that provokes thought in students with different backgrounds without requiring the question to have a specific answer?

            Dolan and Grady focused on the use of inquiry in the classroom, as well as some of the struggles faced by educators to utilize inquiry to its full potential in the classroom setting. One interesting point presented in this article was that modeling alone is not sufficient to encourage teachers to employ inquiry. Inquiry is very ambiguous because there are multiple types of inquiry and teachers may interpret the application of this technique quite differently. Dolan and Grady made me realize that teachers need to examine the effectiveness of inquiry in terms of cognitive development. Inquiry may be a very difficult technique to use in the classroom, but after witnessing the impacts it may have on students, teachers may be more willing to struggle with adapting the technique to their own classroom.

            The article by Campbell et al. presented a definition for inquiry that encompassed the various procedures often used in a classroom environment. Based on the readings that I have done thus far in the semester (including those read this week), I’m not sure if I believe that there is one “correct” way to define inquiry or to use it in the classroom. I believe that inquiry is a technique used to prompt student thought through questioning, providing the students with a framework on which they can build their own knowledge. The degree to which the teacher assists the students in taking steps towards answering the question is entirely up to the teacher, and it may vary from one lesson to the next. With this definition in mind, I struggled to understand how researchers can develop instruments to determine the effectiveness of inquiry in the classroom. If different teachers used different types of inquiry and adapt it to fit their unique classrooms, then how can something measure the effectiveness of a technique that does not have a set formula?

The readings from the Journal of Science Teacher Education were all connected by the topic of inquiry.  I found it very interesting to read these articles, because just earlier this week I participated in a conversation about how inquiry is such a broad term and can be defined quite differently amongst educators.  I watched very knowledgeable people on the subject matter dive into their own reasoning for how a scaffolding-like technique could change a heavily guided inquiry course into a course that put much of the responsibility on the students to foster the inquiry based scientific lessons.  Although the types of inquiry may be differentiated by their structure, the overarching goal of the inquiry based lesson is still prevalent:  inquiry creates a more scientific approach at learning for the students. 

The Campbell et al. article Development of Instruments to Assess Teacher and Student Perceptions of Inquiry Experiences in Science Classrooms, defined inquiry based off of the NSES written by the National Research Council in 1996.  The definition read, “Inquiry is a multifaceted activity that involves making observations; posing questions, examining books and other sources of information to see what is already known; planning investigations; reviewing what is already known in light of experimental evidence; using tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data; proposing answers, explanations, and predictions; and communicating the results.”  Although this definition seems to be fairly comprehensive to the process of inquiry learning, the article also quoted Johnston, who stated that “it is a scientific endeavor in itself, allowing students to be within the culture of scientific inquiry.”  The way I personally view inquiry is something that relates to the latter definition.  Inquiry allows the students to gain insight into science by the context that these lessons allow the information to present itself.  Rather than a teacher being the source of all the information, inquiry lessons allow the nature of science to be brought forth in the classroom.  As the readings noted, the inquiry based lessons are not practiced as frequently as they should be.

The article by Lustick titled The Priority of the Question:  Focus Questions for Sustained Reasoning in Science addressed how an effective question can enable a student to reason and develop understanding.  This made me think about the labs that are being revamped for the Biology introduction course.  The labs have guided questions that the students are supposed to keep in mind as they work through the laboratory assignments. I think that abstract concepts become much more accessible to the students when there is a question that refocuses them.  I thought it was interesting the eight groups that the questions were organized into (Informational, Interpretive, Explanatory, Procedural, Relational, Verificational, Heuristic, and Evaluational).  I never really thought so intently upon questioning, but I could see how vital it could be to guide the students and have them reach a higher level of understanding.  The way to reach this level of understanding also relies on the three criteria for identifying high quality questions, created by Goodman and Berntson.  These characteristics were accessible, short, and leading.  The accessibility characteristic especially caught my eye because it related to the students background.  With a diverse classroom and students coming from different backgrounds it made me wonder how can educators form a question that all students can relate to? 

In the article Recognizing Students’ Scientific Reasoning: A Tool for Categorizing Complexity of Reasoning During Teaching by Inquiry, Dolan et al. described the criteria that must be met to be involved in the research; only teachers who are interested and opened to successful inquiry were studied.  I think it would be neat to have seen a classroom environment that was deemed to be a successful for inquiry.  I thought it was also interesting that Dolan et al. explicitly stated their theoretical framework.  Is a lesson that is inquiry based always an application of situated cognition? 

After reading our three articles from the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, I have a new found appreciation for how our class is run. The big idea that I got from looking at these three articles collectively was that students derive much benefit from being able to work in groups and discuss concepts with each other. The Chin and Osbourne article was particularly illustrative (is that a word?) to me. I was struck by the description of how the teacher intervention in the “worst” group actually hindered their discussion and might have prevented them from coming to a better understanding of the concepts (pgs 900-901). I thought that while the example was good and showed that students are capable of coming to a higher understanding on their own terms, it wasn’t an example that should taken as proof that teachers should leave students to themselves. I think a certain amount of teacher intervention can be good, although apparently not so much under the specific circumstances of the study in the article.

The Radinsky, et. al. article also demonstrated the power of student discussion.  Through the subtle nudging of the teacher and the questions of the other students, “Camilla” was able to more clearly explain and support her theory about why the days are shorter in fall and winter. I was a fan of the whole set-up the teacher created, through the journals about students initial ideas of the topic, to the explanation of their theory to the rest of  the class and the ensuing explanation. I found the authors’ breakdown of the discourse moves (pg 634) to be pretty accurate of how articles are actually constructed.

The final article by Varelas, et. al. I found to be a subtle argument in favor of student group discussion. While not the main point of the article, I found that in the various excerpts there was evidence of students gaining a better understanding of concepts through their acting and through the teachers asking questions about how the molecules behave or the chains of the food web. I liked the idea of acting out science, although its probably not something that would work well once students got to a certain age.

            The three articles were published throughout the current year in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.  All three of these articles were case studies that in one shape or form had grounding in the construction of meaning through social situations.  First of all I would like to say that it was really neat to be able to read about the set up of the research experiments.  In the future semesters I will be looking to do my own research, and reading about the methods of other researchers was an application that was interesting to receive insight into. 

            Radinsky et al. made the point that the possession of science knowledge by the individual rather than constructed socially is a belief that is stressed and embedded in the current science education culture and standards.  This accepted practice is something that is leading to a huge division between the nature of science in a scientific community, and how students learn within a classroom. Radinsky et al. stated on page 619, in reference to what their research entails, “It emphasizes that professional communities of scientists generate new knowledge through a collective, contested, negotiated process, based on communication and mutual accommodation of ideas, rather than simply through the individual exercise of abstract logical reasoning.” The  Vygotsky-like philosophy that Radinsky et al. brought forward in their research provided students with opportunities to interact and co-construct a shared meaning for a phenomenon.  I believe that this interaction allowed the students to unite with the science learning process in a noteworthy and meaningful manner.  Camila, and the students of the classroom, underwent lesson plans that challenged them to construct a socially accepted theory, and talk themselves through misconceptions in order to arrive at an understanding that was viable to what the scientific world would deem appropriate.  I thought it was really neat to read the discourse of the students, and how the interactions between the students altered the theory and conceptions of the class.  The part of the study that grabbed my attention the most was when Camila was challenged to explain her logic with greater detail, and eventually arrived at a notion of a “wrapping effect.”  Through the questions of Melinda and the teacher, Camila developed her theory by the support of others.  There was a cognitive approach that Camila took to create the  meaning that she derived, but she was able to be influenced and translate this meaning by a social aspect of learning.  Although this process in Radinsky et al. takes longer than simply telling the students what the answer was,  I believe there is no comparison between the two ways to approach this situation.  The thought process helped the students arrive at the correct scientific explanation, while still holding true to the nature of science and the fashion that scientists use to discover new findings.  I was also impressed with this study because of the acknowledgment of developing a learning environment that allowed for the student who is usually perceived as low achieving, to be able to relate to the material and make connections that are stronger than what would occur during a plain old lesson.  When I finished reading this article I was content to have an example of a socially constructed meaning in the classroom, where the researchers do not knock the importance of the cognitive approach.  Radinksy et al. rather demonstrated how the social discourse in the classroom allowed for learning that related to scientific practices. 

            Chin et al. was another group that demonstrated the importance of social activity.  For Chin et al. the social activity that was particularly important was argumentation.  As stated on page 883, “it has been argued that, if our students are to be enculturated into the workings of the scientific enterprise, argumentation should be a core component of school science.”  I found many of the practices Chin et al. did really interesting.  The practice of constructing question webs to organize a structure to the students thought process, and using a scaffolding method to allow students to take more responsibility for a successful argumentation process, were two research methods I thought were very interesting.  The ability to use evidence and create counterarguments are two skills that I think are very important to translate into constructive classroom discussions.  I thought that this article presented a very good case for the importance of teaching students the art of argumentation that is constructive to help build common understandings.

            The only article that I had trouble relating to was Varelas et al.  Overall, I understand the key point that drama in a science class could play on the emotions and feelings of the student, and that shared meanings may be created by this process.  I just don’t know what type of function this could serve when teaching middle school or high school students.  I do like the thought that drama can spark more interest from the students, but I don’t know how it could translate to a lot of the curriculum that is to be taught throughout the year.  I think that this study did not interest me as much because it was an elementary cohort that was studied in the article. 

            At the start of this week’s readings, I wasn’t quite sure how (or even if) all of the readings would examine a similar topic. While thinking about the readings after completing them, I found that each paper was unique in content discussed; however, all of them explicitly commented on the importance of group interactions in the learning process. It was fascinating to see how these researchers took the theories that we have been discussing in class (such as those of Greeno and Vygotsky) and used them to support their experiments and analyze their data. It was also very enjoyable to read about how some aspects of these theories can be applied specifically to a science classroom. I’ve struggled with trying to apply these theoretical frameworks to classroom situations over the past seven weeks, and I now see that this was likely because I was trying to find a situation that encompassed all aspect of each theory.

            One point that I believe each researcher made, either implicitly or explicitly, was that language is an extremely important aspect in learning. When discussing Vygotsky’s theory in class several weeks ago, we spent time discussing the significance of developing a common language to enable different members of the same culture to communicate their ideas. The article by Radinsky et al. explicitly emphasized the significance of language: “The science talks were used for making students’ private thoughts public, providing a space in which to think things through and clarify understandings” (p 623). These authors utilized language in their study and found that developing common understandings of words through scientific talk helped the students to developed more well-rounded understandings of the information. Chin and Osborne also encouraged the students to develop a common language through questioning each other and responding to such questions with their interpretations. This argumentation provided the students with a social opportunity in which they were able to further their understandings of scientific material. All three of the articles illustrated the significance of understanding a common scientific language in the process of learning through social interactions.
            I found the article by Varelas et al. to be particularly interesting. I had never heard about the use of dramatizations in the learning of scientific concepts, and after reading the title, I wasn’t sure if I would see the significance of using this idea in the classroom. Varelas showed that through student participation in drama activities, they were able to “[negotiate] ambiguity and [re-articulate] understandings, thus marking this embodied meaning making as a powerful way of their engagement with science” (p. 321). It appears that the students were able to increase their understanding of topics such as matter through engaging in drama activities. The students were able to learn the information through their social interactions with each other, illustrating the significance that these interactions have on student learning. I’m not sure if I see the effectiveness of utilizing such a technique in a high school classroom. The article examined the effectiveness with students of elementary school age; I would be interested to see if high school students could learn scientific concepts through dramatizations as well.

            Based on the titles of the articles and their provided abstracts, I was under the impression that they would all deal solely with the social aspect of learning. However, this was not the case. The article by Ratinsky et al. explicitly mentioned the importance of using both social and cognitive theories within the classroom. All of the articles recognized that learning occurs on an individual basis, as well as in group situations. As I attempt to figure out where I stand on the spectrum of situated and cognitive, I found it refreshing to see that some researchers identify the various roles that each theory plays in learning. Learning does not solely occur in the cognitive sense, and it does not solely occur in social situations. I’m still grappling with my own interpretations of each theory, but it’s nice to see the applicability of certain aspects to the classroom environment.