Tracing Young Children's Scientific Reasoning

This paper explores the scientific reasoning of 14 children across their first two years of primary school. Children's view of experimentation, their approach to exploration, and their negotiation of competing knowledge claims, are interpreted in terms of categories of epistemological reasoning. Children's epistemological reasoning is distinguished from their ability to control variables. While individual children differ substantially, they show a relatively steady growth in their reasoning, with some contextual variation. A number of these children are reasoning at a level well in advance of curriculum expectations, and it is argued that current recommended practice in primary science needs to be rethought. The data is used to explore the relationship between reasoning and knowledge, and to argue that the generation and exploration of ideas must be the key driver of scientific activity in the primary school.     

国际教育评价中的科学探究能力测评简介及启示

科学探究能力测评已经成为世界科学教育专家关注的焦点。国际上目前采用了三种测评方法,分别为TIMSS、PISA和NAEP。通过对这三种测评中科学探究的能力目标分类体系的介绍,指出了三种测评在考查科学探究能力各个方面的特点,提出了可供我们借鉴的有关启示。     

美国俄勒冈州科学探究的工作单评价方法

工作单评价是目前较受推崇的科学探究评价方法.美国俄勒冈州的科学探究工作单评价有一套完善的运行程序,不仅以州制定的官方科学探究评分指南作为评价依据,还有相应保障实施的条件,给我国科学探究评价以一定的启示.     

建构理工大学生科学创造力测评体系的探讨

随着对创造力认识的深入,人们逐渐从一个整合的框架中去理解它。本文通过对已有的创造力测评方法加以修改和组合,尝试建构一个多维度和全面的量表测评体系来测评理工科大学生的科学创造力,并以其对中国科学技术大学部分学生进行了实证研究。     

学习性评价:涵义、方法及原理

学习性评价是以"促进学生发展、教师提高和改进教学实践"为目的的内部非正式评价,也是有效教学的一个有机组成部分.学习性评价的主要方法可以概括为:(1)改进课堂提问方式,增加回答"等待时间";(2)提高作业反馈质量,促进学生深入反思;(3)加强同伴与自我评价,形成自主与责任意识;(4)两种评价结合并用,优化评价教育功能.在科学课堂上实施学习性评价,首先改变了科学教师的教学方式,其次促进了学生学习方式的转变,提高课堂互动的效果和教学质量,从而有效地促进师生的共同发展.     

高师理科教学与学生科学推理能力的培养

科学推理能力是理科师范生应具备的一种重要能力.用 "Lawson科学推理能力测试量表(LCTSR)"对四所师范院校理科学生进行测试,结果显示理科学生科学推理测试成绩普遍偏低;测查的7个能力维度水平发展不均衡,其中高级控制变量推理能力最低;能力维度得分与院校存在显著相关性但与专业和年级的相关性不显著,这表明师范院校理科教学对提高学生科学推理能力作用不明显.为此,结合理科教学现状进行深入分析了原因并提出理科教学改革的建议.     

Affordances and Constraints of Using the Socio-Political Debate for Authentic Summative Assessment

This article reports from an empirical study on the affordances and constraints for using staged socio-political debates for authentic summative assessment of scientific literacy. The article focuses on conditions for student participation and what purposes emerge in student interaction in a socio-political debate. As part of the research project, a socio-political debate was designed for assessing student competences of scientific literacy in classroom practices. The debate centred on a fictive case about a lake where a decline in the yield of fish had been established. The students were assigned the task of participating in the debate from appointed roles as different stakeholders. Data were collected with video recordings of the enacted student debates. Student participation was analysed with the theoretical framework of communities of practice. The results show that multiple conflicting purposes of the socio-political debate as an assessment task emerged. The emergent purposes were (1) putting scientific knowledge on display versus staying true to one's role, (2) putting scientific knowledge on display versus expressing social responsibility, (3) putting scientific knowledge on display versus winning the debate, and (4) using sources tactically versus using sources critically. As these purposes emerged in classroom practice, tensions between different ways of enacting participation in the debates became manifest. Based on these findings, this article discusses the affordances and constraints for using a socio-political debate for classroom-based assessment of scientific literacy and argumentation in terms of validity, reliability and affordability.     

The Parallels Between Philosophical Inquiry and Scientific Inquiry: Implications for science education

The ‘community of inquiry’ as formulated by C. S. Peirce is grounded in the notion of communities of discipline‐based inquiry engaged in the construction of knowledge. The phrase ‘transforming the classroom into a community of inquiry’ is commonly understood as a pedagogical activity with a philosophical focus to guide classroom discussion. But it has a broader application. Integral to the method of the community of inquiry is the ability of the classroom teacher to actively engage in the theories and practices of discipline‐based communities of inquiry so as to become informed by the norms of the disciplines, not only to aspire to competence within the disciplines, but also to develop habits of self‐correction for reconstructing those same norms when faced with novel problems and solutions, including those in the classroom. This has implications for science education and the role of educational philosophy in developing students' ability to think scientifically. But it also has broader implications for thinking critically within all key learning areas. Here we concentrate on science education. We present the parallels between philosophical inquiry and scientific inquiry that need to be realised to promote and engage with scientific inquiry in the classroom. We also discuss the conflicts between philosophical inquiry and the way inquiry science in the classroom is portrayed in the education literature. Based on philosophical and historical perceptions of science as inquiry, a practical approach to implementation of scientific inquiry in the science classroom is presented.     

Advice to a New Science Teacher: The Importance of Establishing a Theme in Teaching Scientific Explanations

In the Humanities, my most memorable teachers were those who did more than teach the subject matter of some discipline. They espoused an underlying theme that established a perspective or framework within which to structure the details of the subject being taught. This paper will describe a particularly useful theme that reveals the structure of certain scientific explanations relevant to a study of chemistry. Because it emphasizes the structure of certain scientific explanations found in chemistry, it usually helps a student to distinguish a sensible explanation from one that is not. Some might suggest that the Scientific Method as proposed by Roger Bacon is particularly suitable for such a theme. I disagree. The Scientific Method—no matter what model is used—is too generic. It lacks the specificity necessary to be useful in the role of a theme. This paper is intended to provide an example of a theme for an introduction to chemistry that I have found particularly useful. However, before continuing, let me put in an immediate disclaimer. The theme that I have found most useful is neither the only possible theme nor necessarily the best. However, it does demonstrate what a theme in a science course means to me. Hopefully its usefulness will be apparent to the reader.     

新课程背景下科学探究教学活动解读——两位理科教师实施科学探究教学质性研究报告

本文用质性方法对两位理科教师实施科学探究教学活动进行了分析。     

基于公平视角的科学探究能力评价研究

采用纸笔测验、工作单和现场观察评价178名初三学生的科学探究能力,以研究不同评价方式对不同学生群体的公平性问题。结果发现,男生和女生、场独立型和场依存型的学生、不同物理成绩的学生与工作单和现场观察没有交互作用,但与纸笔测验和工作单(或现场观察)都有一定交互作用。这些发现表明,为了让所有学生公平地展示科学探究能力,应该综合采用纸笔测验、工作单和现场观察等评价方式。     

Evidentiary Competence: Sixth Graders'' Understanding for Gathering and Interpreting Evidence in Scientific Investigations

With the growing emphasis on the development of scientific inquiry skills, there is a strong need for more research on students' ability to collect and interpret evidence. This paper calls attention to the notion of evidentiary competence that refers to the concepts and reasoning skills involved in the collection, organization, and interpretation of data. We proposed a set of concepts and skills involved in evidentiary competence and examined sixth of them—the priority, relevancy, objectivity, replicability of evidence, and the interpretation of examples and tables—using a written instrument contextualized in atmospheric science. Analyses of 40 sixth grade students' answers and explanations revealed that their understanding of scientific evidence and the data collection process was quite weak in several respects. For example, many students neither appreciated the role of empirical evidence in scientific inquiry, nor distinguished relevant evidence from irrelevant evidence, nor understood the importance of reliable and objective observations, nor interpreted examples and tables appropriately. Results suggest that more explicit instructions are needed in order to strengthen students' ability to collect and interpret data, especially in the current data rich information age.     

科学构建高职学前专业学生科学探究活动设计的平台

幼儿园科学探究活动是实现幼儿科学教育,激发科学潜能的主要方式。本文结合幼儿园科学探究活动,探讨如何为高职学前专业学生构建幼儿科学探究活动设计的平台,从而有效提升学生的自然科学素养,为幼教事业输送高素质的人才     

Scientific Reasoning,School Achievement and Gender: a Multilevel Study of between and within School Effects in Finland

The relationships between reasoning and school achievement were studied taking into account the multilevel nature (school- and class-levels) of the data. We gathered data from 51 classes at seven schools in metropolitan and Eastern Finland (N = 769, 395 males, 15-year-old students). To study scientific reasoning, we used a modified version of Science Reasoning Tasks, tapping control-of-variable schemata. Analyses were conducted by MLwiN2.10 multilevel modelling. The present results showed that the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of schools for scientific reasoning is 7% and that the corresponding ICC of classes is 10%. Whereas the first finding confirms earlier PISA results, the second finding provides new insights into class variation within schools. In practice, class composition seems to be an efficient solution to meeting the differing needs of individual students.     

不确定环境下供应商风险评价的区间证据推理

应用区间证据推理,对一类具有模糊不确定性指标的供应商进行风险评价。首先建立供应商二级结构的指标评价体系,利用区间值表示指标,避免单一值描述指标的不准确性。利用区间证据推理对各级指标依次进行递归融合,得到供应商的效用值并依此进行风险评价。实例表明该方法是一种在不确定环境下,对供应商进行风险评价的有效方法。