Korean Students' Perceptions of Scientific Practices and Understanding of Nature of Science

Korean students have shown relatively little interest and confidence in learning science, despite being ranked in the top percentile in international evaluations of academic achievement in science such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Although research indicates a positive relationship between student perceptions of science and their science learning, this area has not been sufficiently explored in Korea. Particularly, even though both students' perceptions of scientific practice and their understanding of the nature of science (NOS) are influenced by their science learning experiences at schools, little research examines how this perception, understanding, and experience are related to one another. This study aimed to uncover Korean students' perceptions of school scientific practice through exploring their drawings, writings, and responses to questionnaires. Participants were 500 Korean students in 3rd, 7th, and 10th grades who were asked to complete an open-ended questionnaire. The results indicated that Korean students typically viewed school scientific practices as experimental activities or listening to lecture; and that most participants held an insufficient understanding of the NOS. Overall, no significant relationship emerged between students' perceptions of school scientific practice and their understanding of the NOS. Our findings highlight the need to help both teachers and students understand the potential breadth of school scientific practices, beyond simple ‘activity mania.’ This study also suggests that teachers must balance implicit and explicit instructional approaches to teaching about the NOS through scientific practices in school science contexts.     

The Pendulum: Its Place in Science,Culture and Pedagogy

The study and utilisation of pendulum motion has had immense scientific, cultural, horological, philosophical, and educational impact. The International Pendulum Project (IPP) is a collaborative research effort examining this impact, and demonstrating how historical studies of pendulum motion can assist teachers to improve science education by developing enriched curricular material, and by showing connections between pendulum studies and other parts of the school programme especially mathematics, social studies and music. The Project involves about forty researchers in sixteen countries plus a large number of participating school teachers.The pendulum is a universal topic in university mechanics courses, high school science subjects, and elementary school programmes, thus an enriched approach to its study can result in deepened science literacy across the whole educational spectrum. Such literacy will be manifest in a better appreciation of the part played by science in the development of society and culture.     

Idealisation and Galileo’s Pendulum Discoveries: Historical, Philosophical and Pedagogical Considerations

Galileo’s discovery of the properties of pendulum motion depended on his adoption of the novel methodology of idealisation. Galileo’s laws of pendulum motion could not be accepted until the empiricist methodological constraints placed on science by Aristotle, and by common sense, were overturned. As long as scientific claims were judged by how the world was immediately seen to behave, and as long as mathematics and physics were kept separate, then Galileo’s pendulum claims could not be substantiated; the evidence was against them. Proof of the laws required not just a new science, but a new way of doing science, a new way of handling evidence, a new methodology of science. This was Galileo’s method of idealisatioin. It was the foundation of the Galilean–Newtonian Paradigm which characterised the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, and the subsequent centuries of modern science. As the pendulum was central to Galileo’s and Newton’s physics, appreciating the role of idealisation in their work is an instructive way to learn about the nature of science.     

Roles of Abductive Reasoning and Prior Belief in Children’s Generation of Hypotheses about Pendulum Motion

The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that student’s abductive reasoning skills play an important role in the generation of hypotheses on pendulum motion tasks. To test the hypothesis, a hypothesis-generating test on pendulum motion, and a prior-belief test about pendulum motion were developed and administered to a sample of 5th grade children. A significant number of subjects who have prior belief about the length to alter pendulum motion failed to apply their prior belief to generate a hypothesis on a swing task. These results suggest that students’ failure in hypothesis generation was related to abductive reasoning ability, rather than simple lack of prior belief. This study, then, supports the notion that abductive reasoning ability beyond prior belief plays an important role in the process of hypothesis generation. This study suggests that science education should provide teaching about abductive reasoning as well as scientific declarative knowledge for developing children’s hypothesis-generation skills.     

Primary children's views on science and environmental issues: examples of environmental cognitive and moral development

Children from seven classes representing the year groups in a primary school were interviewed in groups of three or four to find out their understanding and views on issues related to the environment and science. The large majority showed considerable interest and concern about environmental issues related to their experience and understanding, drawn from school and influences outside of the school, though most showed limitations and contradictions in their understanding of the issues. The children's understanding of science was mainly limited to their experience of the subject at school and few showed any understanding of the impact of science on society or the environment. Examples of children's cognitive and moral development of environmental issues are presented, including features of phases in the development, as identified from the interviews. The implications for teaching science and environmental education are discussed.     

Positioning as not‐understanding: The value of showing uncertainty for engaging in science

Not understanding is central to scientific work: what scientists do is learn about the natural world, which involves seeking out what they do not know. In classrooms, however, the position of not‐understanding is generally a liability; confusion is an unfortunate condition to resolve as quickly as possible, or to conceal. In this article, we argue that students' public displays of uncertainty or confusion can be pivotal contributions to the classroom dynamics in initiating and sustaining a class's science inquiry. We present this as a central finding from a cross‐case analysis of eight episodes of students' scientific engagement, drawing on literature on framing to show how participants positioned themselves as not‐understanding and how that was consequential for the class's scientific engagement. We show how participants enacted this positioning by asking questions or expressing uncertainty around a phenomenon or model. We then analyze how participants' displays of not‐understanding shaped the conceptual, epistemic, and social aspects of classroom activity. We present two cases in detail: one in which a student's positioning helped initiate the class's scientific engagement and another in which it helped sustain it. We argue that this work motivates considering how to help students learn to embrace and value the role of expressing one's confusion in science.     

Conceptualizations of nature: An interpretive study of 16 ninth graders' everyday thinking

The research reported in this article sought to provide a broader understanding of high school science students as persons by describing the personal thoughts, or everyday thinking, about a question relevant to science: What is Nature? The purpose was to gain an understanding of students' fundamental beliefs about the world on the basis that developing scientific literacy can be successful only to the extent that science finds a niche in the cognitive and cultural milieu of students. The theoretical background for this research came from cultural anthropology and the methodology was interpretive, involving student interviews. The assertions of the study in summary form were: (a) The ninth‐grade students in the study tended to discuss Nature using several different perspectives (e.g., religious, aesthetic, scientific, conservationist). A rich breadth of perspectives typically characterized any one student's discussion of Nature. (b) After 9 years of schooling, however, the level of science integration within everyday thinking remained low for many of these ninth graders. In their discussions of Nature, most volunteered little school knowledge of science. They were aware of school science topics such as the ozone layer, rain forests, and the Big Bang theory. Such topics were voluntarily mentioned but usually without elaboration even when asked. (c) Science grade success was not correlated with the concepts these ninth graders typically chose to use in a discussion about the natural world. The students with the most grade success in science had not necessarily grasped fundamental concepts about Nature and science. (d) Regardless of school grade success, including school science grade success, most of the ninth graders attached considerable importance to personal experiences with Nature. Their environmental inclinations were strong. The article ends with a discussion of the implications. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 541–564, 1999     

Effects of an Educational Experience Incorporating an Inventory of Factors Potentially Influencing Student Acceptance of Biological Evolution

This investigation provides an extensive review of scientific, religious, and otherwise non-scientific factors that may influence student acceptance of biological evolution. We also measure the extent to which students' levels of acceptance changed following an educational experience designed to address an inclusive inventory of factors identified as potentially affecting student acceptance of evolution (n = 81, pre-test/post-test) n = 37, one-year longitudinal). Acceptance of evolution was measured using the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) instrument among participants enrolled in a secondary-level academic programme during the summer prior to their final year of high school and as they transitioned to the post-secondary level. Student acceptance of evolution was measured to be significantly higher than initial levels both immediately following and over one year after the educational experience. Results reported herein carry implications for future quantitative and qualitative research as well as for cross-disciplinary instruction plans related to evolutionary science and non-scientific factors which may influence student understanding of evolution.     

Emirates secondary school science teachers' perspectives on the nexus between modern science and arab culture

During the 1999/2000 school year, 286 secondary school science teachers, from the seven Emirates that constitute the UAE, participated in the study. Teachers responded to an instrument composed of 52 items. Results indicated that Emirates secondary school science teachers did not view modern science as only a sub-culture of the Western culture. They disagreed that Western beliefs, values and conventions are implicit aspects of science. Teachers indicated that there are no differences between modern science and Arab culture. It seems that teachers lacked an understanding of the social component of science. The study suggests that Emirates secondary school science teachers should be informed about the social component of science. It is argued that when discussing culturally critical scientific issues, Emirates science teachers should assume the role of cultural brokers to facilitate students' understanding of science.     

A comparative study of three methods for the popularization of a physical phenomenon

A study of Norwegian science textbooks for grade 8 indicates an individualistic image of science where individual scientists are discovering truth, through experiment. Scientific rationality is grounded in procedures of inquiry alone and not in debate and argumentation within scientific communities. The communal aspects of science tend to become visible in historical examples where science did not function properly due to prejudices or ignorance. Furthermore, science proper and school science are not differentiated between, and 'scientific knowledge about nature' and 'nature' are one and the same. The discourse identified is well suited to provide students with broad and general knowledge about natural and everyday phenomena. However, it is less suitable for teaching about the scientific enterprise in contemporary society. This is worrying for students' scientific literacy as future adults, as this dimension is essential for understanding the nature of science and for democratic citizenship in socio-scientific issues.     

Secondary students’ modelling conceptualisation in situations related to particle dynamics: a clinical perspective

This study investigates the modelling conceptualisation of secondary school students in two situations related to particle dynamics: pendulum’s motion and horizontal motion. We performed in-depth clinical interviews with secondary school students (N?=?10). Participants’ ideas about properties which are not ‘given’ in empirical observations were explored in order to investigate signs of abstractions and idealisations in their reasoning processes. We proposed contributions to modelling in science education based on Mario Bunge’s epistemology and we employed his basic concepts as the axis to analyse our results: (1) abstractions and idealisations, considered as thought processes required to build conceptual counterparts of concrete objects; (2) theoretical models, meaning hypothetico-deductive systems concerning those conceptual objects; and (3) general theoretical frameworks that allow us to derive those theoretical models. We developed our analysis viewing the ideas presented by participants as concepts-in-action and theorems-in-action as regarded by Gérard Vergnaud’s Theory of Conceptual Fields. Results indicated a gradation in the concepts-in-action mobilised in terms of levels of idealisation and showed that participants do not spontaneously recognise the use of a general theory as a possible way to obtain a theoretical model. These results suggest that science education practices must pay better attention to make abstractions and idealisations explicit in scientific concepts formation, as well as to the heuristic role of theories in model construction.     

A view of the tip of the iceberg: revisiting conceptual continuities and their implications for science learning

This project explores conceptual continuity as a framework for understanding students’ native ways of understanding and describing. Conceptual continuity suggests that the relationship between the use of words in one genre and the scientific genre can exist at varying levels of association. This perspective can reveal the varied relationships between ideas explained in everyday or vernacular genres and their association to scientific explanations. We conducted a 2-year study involving 15 high school baseball players’ understanding of the physics involved in baseball. First, we conducted a quantitative assessment of their science understanding by administering a test prior to season one (2006) and season two (2007). Second, we examined the types of linguistic resources students used to explain their understanding. Third, we revisited our data by using conceptual continuity to identify similarities between students’ conceptual understanding in the informal contexts and their similarities to canonical scientific ideas. The results indicated students’ performance on the multiple-choice questions suggested no significant improvement. The qualitative analyses revealed that students were able to accurately explain different components of the idea by using a diversity of scientific and non-scientific genres. These results call attention to the need to reconstruct our vision of science learning to include a more language sensitive approach to teaching and learning.     

Nonverbal Ability and Scientific Vocabulary Predict Children's Causal Reasoning in Science Better than Generic Language

Verbal and nonverbal forms of thinking exhibit widespread dissociation at neural and behavioral level. The importance of this for children's causal thinking and its implications for school science are largely unknown. Assessing 5‐ to 10‐year‐olds' responses (N = 231), verbal ability predicted causal reasoning, but only at lower levels, while nonverbal ability was the strongest predictor at higher levels of causal inference. We also distinguished between generic and scientific vocabulary use (n = 101). The results showed that use of scientific vocabulary predicted causal reasoning beyond generic, and connected more to nonverbal thinking. The findings highlighted the importance of elementary school science activities supporting application of nonverbal ability in thinking about causal processes; the benefits of linking nonverbal imagery to scientific vocabulary; and shortcomings in understanding of the forms/sources of nonverbal ability and their role in learning.     

Designing Science Learning in the First Years of Schooling. An intervention study with sequenced learning material on the topic of ‘floating and sinking'

Research on learning and instruction of science has shown that learning environments applied in preschool and primary school rarely makes use of structured learning materials in problem-based environments although these are decisive quality features for promoting conceptual change and scientific reasoning within early science learning. We thus developed and implemented a science learning environment for children in the first years of schooling which contains structured learning materials with the goal of supporting conceptual change concerning the understanding of the floating and sinking of objects and fostering students' scientific reasoning skills. In the present implementation study, we aim to provide a best-practice example of early science learning. The study was conducted with a sample of 15 classes of the first years of schooling and a total of 244 children. Tests were constructed to measure children's conceptual understanding before and after the implementation. Our results reveal a decrease in children's misconceptions from pretest to posttest. After the curriculum, the children were able to produce significantly more correct predictions about the sinking or floating of objects than before the curriculum and also relative to a control group. Moreover, due to the intervention, the explanations given for their predictions implied a more elaborated concept of material kinds. All in all, a well-structured curriculum promoting comparison and scientific reasoning by means of inquiry learning was shown to support children's conceptual change.     

Can 'ears-on' help hands-on science learning for girls and boys?

The primary objective of the research was to establish whether the use of the newly developed audiopilot (a personalized auditory commentary system) facilitates both hands-on exploration and the understanding of scientific principles in a science centre. Twenty-four ten year-old children used the AudioPilot while they interacted with a set of pendulum experiments. A control group of 28 children from the same classes experienced the same experiments but without the Audio-Pilot. Videos were made of all the children and their behaviours were later coded. They completed a questionnaire about pendulums before and after going to the science centre. A gender effect emerged. The audio-pilot greatly facilitated the girls' hands-on activity and improved their questionnaire scores, which was highly statistically significant. This suggests that auditory commentaries are a good way of communicating difficult scientific concepts, especially to girls. Further research is needed to confirm whether this finding can be generalized over different schools.     

Elementary students' views of explanation,argumentation, and evidence,and their abilities to construct arguments over the school year

Science includes more than just concepts and facts, but also encompasses scientific ways of thinking and reasoning. Students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds influence the knowledge they bring to the classroom, which impacts their degree of comfort with scientific practices. Consequently, the goal of this study was to investigate 5th grade students' views of explanation, argument, and evidence across three contexts—what scientists do, what happens in science classrooms, and what happens in everyday life. The study also focused on how students' abilities to engage in one practice, argumentation, changed over the school year. Multiple data sources were analyzed: pre‐ and post‐student interviews, videotapes of classroom instruction, and student writing. The results from the beginning of the school year suggest that students' views of explanation, argument, and evidence, varied across the three contexts with students most likely to respond “I don't know” when talking about their science classroom. Students had resources to draw from both in their everyday knowledge and knowledge of scientists, but were unclear how to use those resources in their science classroom. Students' understandings of explanation, argument, and evidence for scientists and for science class changed over the course of the school year, while their everyday meanings remained more constant. This suggests that instruction can support students in developing stronger understanding of these scientific practices, while still maintaining distinct understandings for their everyday lives. Finally, the students wrote stronger scientific arguments by the end of the school year in terms of the structure of an argument, though the accuracy, appropriateness, and sufficiency of the arguments varied depending on the specific learning or assessment task. This indicates that elementary students are able to write scientific arguments, yet they need support to apply this practice to new and more complex contexts and content areas. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 793–823, 2011     

‘Am I Like a Scientist?’: Primary children's images of doing science in school

A considerable body of evidence highlights how inquiry-based science can enhance students' epistemic and conceptual understanding of scientific concepts, principles, and theories. However, little is known about how students view themselves as learners of science. In this paper, we explore primary children's images of doing science in school and how they compare themselves with ‘real’ scientists. Data were collected through the use of a questionnaire, drawing activity, and interviews from 161 Grade 4 (ages 9–10) students in Singapore. Results indicate that ‘doing science as conducting hands-on investigations’, ‘doing science as learning from the teacher’, ‘doing science as completing the workbook’, and ‘doing science as a social process’ are the images of learning science in school that most of the students held. In addition, students reported that they need to be well behaved first and foremost, while scientists are more likely to work alone and do things that are dangerous. Moreover, students often viewed themselves as ‘acting like a scientist’ in class, especially when they were doing experiments. Nevertheless, some students reported that they were unlike a scientist because they believed that scientists work alone with dangerous experiments and do not need to listen to the teacher and complete the workbook. These research findings further confirm the earlier argument that young children can make distinctions between school science and ‘real’ science. This study suggests that the teaching of science as inquiry and by inquiry will shape how students view their classroom experiences and their attitudes towards science.