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

It’s difficult to combine these two articles as an overall blog posting as they were both very different.  Chin & Osborne are conceptual change advocates who acknowledge the value of socialculture theory, as they briefly alluded to argumentation in a social context (pg. 231).   They focus on social aspects of learning as a means to cognitive change.  However, the Barton & Tan article addressed learning as agency and figurative worlds in which much of their work is grounded in sociocultural theory and learning in informal settings (pg. 188-189).  So I shall speak briefly about both.

Chin & Osborne’s findings implied that argumentative discourse can play a key role in classroom learning (p. 234).  This was determined by looking at 4 classrooms: 2 in England and 2 in Singapore.  While their findings indicated “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” (pg. 280) I had concerns about their study samples.  Table 1 indicated the Singapore classes were Year 7 & 8 and the England classes were Year 8 & 9.  In addition, one school was an all-boys selective high school that recruited students from the top 20% and another all girls high school.  In addition, according to the requirements for participation (pg. 244-245), only top level students were participants in this study.  It seemed that in once sense they were comparing apples to oranges since there was not consistency with the age groups and by selecting boys and girls only classes, there were also gender issues occurring as well.  The authors did mention the fact that one teacher dominated the class discussion, which lead to lower results.  However, there were no other limitation statements.  As I was reading the article, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the other factors related to success.  For example, why did the all girls school have twice the questions than all the other classes?  However, I did find the research interesting and again focuses on the importance of teachers effectively using questioning in their classrooms.  

Barton and Tan’s article was interesting to me on a personal level as educational equity is an interest of mine and the importance of equal learning opportunities for ALL students, not just those economically advantaged.  With that being said, I found this article a bit more challenging as it exposed me to new ideas: Learning as Agency and Figured Worlds.  Both are focusing on identity: Agency as identity development (pg. 195) and figured worlds as defined by Luis Urrieta Jr. (Urban Review, 2007) “The concept of figured worlds was first introduced by Holland, Lachi- cotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998) in their seminal book Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Figured worlds, however, is not an isolated concept, but is part of Holland et al.Õs (1998) larger theory of self and identity. Figured worlds are intimately tied to identity work.” (pg. 107).  To me the question with this paper is how can this experience be provided to all students, not just those participating in an informal setting.  And could this even happen in the classroom?

I read the paper both as a newbie researcher trying to get a handle on social science research, a SCIED 552 student struggling with competing learning theories and as a practitioner always looking to improve my classes. 

 As a nascent research, I was first interested in how this paper was similar to and different from the other Chin & Osborne paper that I read from JRST.  It seems as if this paper is a more in depth version of the JRST article with a slightly different focus. Of course I would like to see what the students say without the scaffolding tools ( a type of control group).  I was also interested in how detailed their analysis was of one activity.  So can this one activity be evidence of a broader trend in scaffolding argumentation in other contexts? 

As a SCIED student, I was looking for their epistemological viewpoint.  Although they worked socially in groups, it seemed as if the authors were really after conceptual change.  However, they were also introducing students to the community of scientific practice.  Therefore I guess it is a hybrid model.

As a teacher, I am interested in furthering my students’ arguing skills, since evaluating evidence and persuasion is a part of science.  Teachers often get frustrated when students do not have what we consider to be basic skills.  Oftentimes it is because they have never been explicitly taught those skills.  I liked the scaffolding materials that they tried out because they make explicit the types of questions and evidence that can be used.  I can how these templates can slowly be withdrawn as students become more central participants to the scientific practice by generating their own questions and looking critically at data.

This week’s readings are from Journal of the Learning Sciences.
Chin and Osborne article was the extended version of the article we read in Journal of Research in Science Teaching. I realized when authors provided the tables in this article, they used some synonym words inside the table even though they have same facts, and I think it is important in terms of the ethical issues, since articles are based on the same notion. In this article different than previous one at the end of the article, they provided Questioning-argumentation model showing the role of students’ questions in supporting argumentation. I think this study is a good example of considering both perspectives by including the following quotes as an evidence, “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” (p.280).

The second article is from Calabrese Barton& Tan entitled, “We be burnin’! Agency, Identity, and science learning”. This article has a strong situative perspective. This article was a good example showing the importance of providing authentic learning environments and also opportunities to students to recreate those practices in locally meaningful ways. I think  vertical and horizontal dimensions of learning are one of the interesting concepts in the article.  The practices students engaged in the study are very powerful in terms of providing ownership and curiosity about the phenomena they were studying.  I really liked this study, I think it is very thought provoking and a good example of viewing learning.

My group read the two articles from the Journal of the Learning Sciences.  The article by Barton and Tan about agency and identity very much approached learning within a situative framework.  It made me think about the consideration of situating science learning not only within authentic scientific experiences, but also within experiences that are culturally and socially relevant to the learners.  This is even more critical for learners, who for socioeconomic and cultural reasons may not see themselves as having anything in common with the “scientific establishment.”  It seems that viewing learning this way can allow students to more easily see the importance of science in their world.  In addition, it can be very powerful in allowing them to see science as something they can do and as a career path that they could successfully pursue.   The authors note that there is a “disservice” done to learners “by restricting the range of their expression of and engagement with ideas–a restriction that occurs, more often than not, within the strictures of the traditional classroom” (p. 226).  The traditional culture of school and the classroom is so powerful and more and more I am recognizing this as a massive challenge to learning.

The article by Chin and Osborne also seems to be grounded in a situative view of learning.  It is interesting that all but maybe one out of the eight empirical articles my group read had situative theoretical frameworks.  Is this because that is what we are all attending to more because of the nature of SCIED 552?  Or, is it because the journals we were able to select from publish more articles with a situative view of learning?  I assume journals and editors are more favorable to one type of research than the other.  Are there more situative friendly or cognitive friendly journals out there?  Which are which?  I want to remember to ask Scott about this in class…

These empirical articles we have been reading for the past few weeks have really made me recognize the importance of my methods classes (especially my qualitative methods class that I have this semester).  I now have at least a marginal understanding of a variety of qualitative research methods and this has allowed me to better understand implicit aspects of the pieces we are reading.   Knowing what is meant by grounded theory or critical ethnography allows me to more easily attend to other aspects of the reading without having to do additional interpretation. 

Inquiry is the common theme of this week’s readings. One of the readings is about the importance of focus questions to sustain reasoning in science. Lustick discussed about the lack of authenticity and contextual cues in the questions present in the textbooks and teachers’ tendency to use these questions. The author aimed to develop a typology and conceptual framework to support teachers to identify, develop and evaluate focus questions. The author criticizes the focus question research by being only one side (cognitive side) and gives some examples of focus questions and emphasizes their lack of context. At the end he proposed a framework with four dimensions, content, context, curriculum and cognition. I felt like this article does not have a clear theoretical framework even though he mentioned authentic scientific activities at the end by “properly crafted and implemented, a focus question would allow for students to experience authentic scientific inquiry about a relevant local phenomenon at least once during the school year.”(p.509) At the beginning he criticized the cognitive sidedness of the past research on questions, but at the end the framework he proposed also has a lot of cognitive perspective.  

The second article is “recognizing students’ scientific reasoning…” by Dolan and Grady. The authors explicitly mentioned their perspective as situated cognition “because we explored the reasoning behaviors of individual learners in complex, social, and situated environments: the PREP curriculum and particular classrooms as best case scenarios for inquiry.”(p.34)

The last article is “developing elementary teachers’ understandings of hedges and pronouns in inquiry based science classroom discourse” by Oliveira. This study is about a professional development in which the author mentioned about the language teachers use during classroom activities and how this use of language affect students. He mentioned that research on this topic adopt sociocultural theoretical perspectives and for the analysis he used the scientific talk between students and teachers to point out how language use is important in science classrooms.

After spending weeks reading articles with seminal ideas, this was my mind-frame as I began reading these articles.  While these articles were interesting, I must admit it left me unsatisfied.  Of course I’ve been working hard at removing the “classroom application” thoughts during my readings and reflections, and now that was precisely the necessary requirements needed for these readings.  However, each of these articles were interesting in their focus and suggestions towards increasing student learning through the use of language.

These articles all focused on situated cognitive theories even if their theoretical framework was only implied.  I appreciated the article by Dolan and Grady (2010) which specifically stated their theoretical framework prior to explaining their research work.  The implied theoretical framework of the others left me a bit unsatisfied.  I find this quite interesting, as prior to this class, I never really thought about writers’ theoretical framework when I read articles.  My reading was focused more upon my own application rather than a more critical approach to their work and the foundations.

Two articles focused closely on the use of carefully selected language in the science classroom; one focusing on the creation of well written focus questions in guiding effective scientific investigations and the other looking carefully at teacher’s use of hedges and personal pronouns in classroom discourse.  In Lustick’s paper, “The Priority of the Question: Focus Questions for Sustained Reasoning in Science” he provided an interesting typology regarding focus questions.   He makes an important point that many textbook derived focus questions are generic and are “generated for a mass audience, lack authenticity and contextual cues that allow learners to immediately appreciate a question’s relevance” (pg. 495).  He makes a good point about the importance of looking beyond the textbook generated focus question and to develop “a framework that builds upon cognitive appropriates of questions” (pg. 502).  

The second article, “Developing Elementary Teachers’ Understandings of Hedges and Personal Pronouns in Inquiry-Based Science Classroom Discourse” focused on the teacher’s use of language during science discourse.   This article moves beyond the “sociocultural theoretical perspectives on science talk” (pg. 104), to what I think is establishing a trusting and risk-free classroom environment.  This trusting and risk-free environment in the science classroom can be enhanced or stifled by the teacher’s use of personal pronouns.  This paper really brings to light the small differences in language can make a huge impact and how teachers need to consider their use of language.  

What struck me about Oliveira and Dolan and Grady’s article, “Recognizing Students’ Scientific Reasoning: A Tool for Categorizing Complexity of Reasoning During Teaching by Inquiry” is the learning interventions they describe require teacher reflection on their own practice.  While this analysis is vital to teacher change, I question how professional development providers can effectively provide this type of support.  Results from both papers indicate the success of their study and the importance of providing these types of learning opportunities for teachers, but how can this be done on a large scale? Yet teacher reflection and supporting guidance from a master teacher is essential for effective changes of teacher practice.

The articles annoyed me a bit this week.  This probably because I am interested in teacher professional development and these articles seemed a bit vacuous.

Lustick seemed to have no deep theoretical framework  It mentions the word cognitive, but does not define it.  Funny I am now bothered by this!  I understand the need for focus questions for inquiry, but this article does not seem to offer much new except for an awareness of this need.  If an awareness is all that was needed, then any teaching job would be easy.

Oliveira also developed awareness and stressed a sociocultural perspective, but not in their actual work with teachers.  If you believe that people learn best through constructing their own knowledge and that the knowledge is a social construct, then lecturing on the material and then listening to a discussion does not seem to match that idea.  I would have rather seen the teachers watch videos and pick put the hedges and their purposes themselves as well as develop the importance of them.  I also had a problem with their data.  To me, listening to a discussion right after a lecture does not show an increase in awareness, especially among motivated people.  I want to know how these teachers applied their awareness in the classroom.  I have been to numerous workshops that have made me think about certain issues,  or ideas and that is all I did with it – think about it during the workshop.  There was little effect or manifestation in my classroom.

Maybe I am just grumpy from reading too many ed. research articles and trying to get my quarter grades done.

My group read the articles from the Journal of Science Teacher Education.  These were actually the articles we selected back in the middle of October, with a common theme of both reasoning and scientific discourse with an inquiry-based focus.  I don’t feel like I have too much to say about them for this blog, but here goes…

When we read the previous class selected articles a few weeks ago, I initially assumed it was fairly easy to determine the theoretical framework of a paper.  I figured it could be determined from the abstract alone.  This was not the case.  It took a more careful consideration of how the authors approached their study and what they considered evidence for learning.  I even realized that one cannot necessarily assume that the stated theoretical framework or the body of literature cited will be a perfect fit with the paper’s true intent.  For example, some authors might be cognitive people masquerading in the clothing of the situative.

After a more careful consideration this time, I would say that these three articles approach learning primarily with a situative lens.  My biggest reason for this is the unit of measurement.  None of the articles look at individual learners.  In addition, the articles are very descriptive qualitative studies.  They are not measuring anything and then measuring it again after a given intervention.  They are focused on what Greeno calls activity systems, “complex social organizations containing learners, teachers, curriculum materials, software tools, and the physical environment” (Greeno 2006, p. 79).  The Dolan and Grady article is looking at a means to evaluate complex reasoning during inquiry teaching and examined this with case studies of two exemplary classrooms.  Lustick is looking at the use of long-term context specific focus questions and notes in his conclusion that: “Properly crafted and implemented, a focus question would allow for students to experience authentic scientific inquiry about a relevant local phenomenon at least once during the school year” (p. 509).  Finally, Oliveira is really focusing on strengthening classroom discourse by giving practicing teachers an awareness of the often-overlooked “social or interactional dimension of inquiry-based science teaching” (p.104).

This week’s readings are from Journal of Research in Science Teaching.  After reading articles about various learning theories, it was inevitable to pay attention to the perspectives authors took when reading the articles. Before this class, I was also paying attention to the frameworks while reading the articles, but I was not successful at identifying them especially if the authors didn’t explicitly mention their framework. However, this time I feel like I am capable of at least having an idea of their frameworks from the way they choose their words about learning concepts even though they don’t mention them explicitly.

Varelas and et al. (2010) mentioned, ” Considering learning as a process mediated through various material and symbolic spaces, artifacts, and activities (Roth, 2005) particularly nurtures such an emphasis on multimodality and exploration of its role in improving understanding of, and engagement with, ideas.”(p.303) They investigated “how dramatic enactments of scientific constructs, ideas, and phenomena mediate and are mediated by scientific understandings and everyday knowledge along material, social and representational dimensions.”(p.306) Even though they didn’t cite directly Vygotsky until the discussion part of the article, I assume from the quotes above that their framework aligns with the Vygotsky’s sociocultural view of learning. Varelas et al. used Holiday’s (1978) three metafunctions of language, “ideational” (constructing and representing characteristics and processes of the world around us),”interpersonal” (constructing and enacting social interactions between people as they engage with ideas), and “textual” (constructing the drama activity as a recognizable, coherent multimodal text expressing ideas)(p.305) when coding their data. I think using these dimensions of language is consistent with the framework since Vygotsky’s theory emphasizes the tools and signs when constructing knowledge.

Radinsky et al. emphasized social, co-constructed and distributed nature of knowledge while mentioning that past research emphasized more individual, what is in the head type of view.
“Recent research has challenged traditional assumptions that scientific practice and knowledge are essentially individual accomplishments, highlighting instead the social nature of scientific practices, and the co- construction of scientific knowledge. Similarly, new research paradigms for studying learning go beyond focusing on what is ”in the head” of individual students, to study collective practices, distributed cognition, and emergent understandings of groups.”(p.619)
“This body of research instead highlights the essentially social nature of scientific practices, and the co-constructed and distributed nature of scientific knowledge. 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.”(p.619)
Radinsky et al. used discourse analysis; specifically they looked at discourse moves in order to understand how classroom discussion took place when discussing one student’s representations on her understanding about the scientific phenomena.

I think Chin and Osborne article has touched upon both social and cognitive perspectives of learning. The following quotes from the article are some of the examples of them. “Both sociocognitive conflict, engendered through disagreement, and cognitive
elaboration have been proposed to explain why collaborative discourse and argumentation may foster conceptual learning in socially mediated learning. Disagreement and cognitive conflict are believed to play an important role in conceptual change.”(p. 884)
“This exploratory study, therefore, sought to investigate how such questions might scaffold students’ argumentative thinking by acting as ”thought- starters” and metacognitive or epistemic tools. It also aimed to compare the differences in students’ discursive interaction that lead to more and less successful argumentation of opposing viewpoints during group discussions.”(p.886) When they are mentioning the purpose of the study they emphasized group discussions as a social mediator of knowledge construction and argumentation, and metacognitive and epistemic tools as a more individual learning component.
When authors mentioned, “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” (p.883), I thought about the apprenticeship models in which students can experience scientists’ roles via argumentation as an example of authentic practices.
Authors used discourse analysis and argumentation diagrams to analyze the data, I think it is compatible with their perspective.