Reflections on and implications of the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 (PISA 2015) performance of students in Taiwan: The role of epistemic beliefs about science in scientific literacy

The 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has drawn a substantial amount of attention from science educators and educational policymakers because it marked the first time that PISA assessed students' ability to evaluate and design scientific inquiry using computer-based simulations. We undertook a secondary analysis of the PISA 2015 Taiwan dataset of 7,973 students from 214 schools to identify critical issues of student learning and potentially reshape our educational system and policies. Thus, this study sought to identify potential latent clusters of students' scientific literacy performance according to a set of focus variables selected from the PISA student questionnaires. In addition, significant determinants of students' scientific literacy and resiliency were analyzed. Cluster analysis results demonstrated the presence of four clusters of high, medium, low, and inferior scientific literacy/epistemology/affective dispositions. Specifically, students in cluster 1 compared with other clusters showed that the higher the scientific literacy scores are, the more positive epistemic beliefs about science, achievement motivation, enjoyment of science, interests in broad science, science self-efficacy, information and communications technology (ICT) interest, ICT autonomy, more learning time, more teacher supports and teacher-directed instructions are. Regression results indicated that the most robust predictor of students' scientific literacy performance is epistemic beliefs about science, followed by learning time, interest in broad science topics, achievement motivation, inquiry-based science teaching and learning practice, and science self-efficacy. Decision tree model results showed that the descending order of the variables in terms of their importance in differentiating students as high- versus low-performing were epistemic beliefs about science, learning time, self-efficacy, interest in broad science, and scientific inquiry, respectively. A similar decision tree model to determine students as resilient versus non-resilient also was found. Various interpretations of these results are discussed, as are their implications for science education research, science teaching, and science education policy.     

A study of practical‐moral knowledge in science teaching: Case studies in physical science classrooms

This study further extends a conceptual framework that explores science teaching as a “practice” not reducible to the application of formal knowledge, but as informed by teachers' practical‐moral knowledge. A hermeneutic model was developed to examine practical‐moral knowledge indirectly by investigating teachers' commitments, interpretations, actions, and dialectic interactions between them. The study also aimed to analyze teachers' actions in terms of their interpretations and commitments as they realize “internal goods” of their practice. Ethnographic case studies of three science teachers were conducted through classroom observation, in‐depth interviews and dialogues, and artifact analysis. A commitment of preparing students for national exams was common to the three teachers but was manifested differently in classroom practices. This commitment originated from interpretations about the duty of “good” teachers not letting students and schools down. Other emergent commitments were commitments: to conceptual understandings, to “challenge” learners, and to social modeling. We present each with associated interpretations and actions. The concepts of practical wisdom (phronesis) and gap closing are used to characterize teachers' practical knowledge and its development respectively. Implications for teacher education are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 929–951, 2010     

Science teachers' sensemaking of the use of epistemic tools to scaffold students' knowledge (re)construction in classrooms

This study explores the process of teacher scaffolding student engagement in epistemic tools from the critical sensemaking perspective. Epistemic tools are contextual artifacts manipulated to investigate and evaluate ideas to construct knowledge within the constraints of a disciplines' representational means. The main sources of our data are ~50 min-long semistructured, responsive interviews with the 14 secondary school science teachers who participated in our professional learning environment (PLE) and implemented the activities from the PLE in their classrooms. We utilized the tools of discourse analysis to explore teacher sensemaking while they learned to teach science with epistemic tools. We then looked at intertextualities of meaning across multiple sets of data such as students' artifacts, pre/postsurveys, audio and video recordings of the workshops, and teachers' written implementation feedback forms. As a result, we recognized a pattern across different classrooms. Teachers would begin with a contextualized goal, and use a pedagogical strategy to scaffold their students as they worked to achieve that goal. Then, all teachers reported they faced some sort of ambiguity (such as grappling with failure, different levels of students). When faced with an ambiguity, teachers would then revise either their contextualized goal or their initial pedagogical strategy to help their students to reach their goals. Finally, we utilized constant-comparative analysis to identify themes for teachers' contextualized goals. Four major themes emerged, including communicating connections to core ideas of science, making sense of how science works, assessing students' learning process outcomes, and fostering students' epistemic agency. The findings of the study have implications for future research and professional development activities on the use of epistemic practices and tools in classrooms with unique contextual characteristics.     

Integrating the epistemic and ontological aspects of content knowledge in science teaching and learning

A study has been made of how physics problems are attempted by school and by university students, in both examination and tutorial situations. The performance of the students is interpreted within the framework of a psychological model of learning which incorporates working memory capacity and disembedding ability. The implications of the results for teaching and for setting problems is emphasized, in that the same question in different forms may be testing different skills.     

Science education — I: The spirit of science

In these two essays we explore the questions: what are the essential features of a workable context for science education? What are the givens, the “of courses,” the “fundamental dispositions” toward science and toward education necessary — or at least sufficient — to provide a fertile ground upon which a functional approach to science education can be established? In the present essay it is argued first that science education must reflect that science is a way of thinking — in fact, more comprehensively, a way of being; and second, and that the fundamentally antiauthoritarian spirit of science must be reconciled with education, with its built-in tendency to be authoritarian.     

Rethinking the ethics of scientific knowledge: A case study of teaching the environment in science classrooms

In this paper we argue that scientific literacy ought to be rethought in that it involves ethics as its core element. Considering the fact that science education has addressed ethical dilemmas of Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE) issues, it is worthwhile to question what the ethics of scientific knowledge mean in terms of their implications in modern society where knowledge generally is separated from action and thereby from the responsibility for knowing. We draw on the concept of integrity of knowing to analyze knowledge about the environment in Korean sixth—grade science classrooms. Examining the notion of immediate coping and ConfucianCheng, we differentiate ‘knowing about ethics’ and ‘knowing ethically’ with respect to STSE issues. We challenge the notion of knowing, suggesting instead that there is not only knowing about but knowingin andfor action. Participatory scientific literacy ought to aim for the latter form of knowing. This understanding of ethics and scientific literacy could help science educators bring forth the responsibility for knowledge in science classrooms by encouraging students to become active and responsible concerning STSE issues.     

挖掘科研积累,丰富教学资源为本科教学服务——"实验室科研探究"大型选修课程的建设与实践

从设立目标、内容简介、建设过程和组织工作等方面，详细论述了“实验室科研探究”新课程的发展历程。由此，提出了将高校实验室科研积累转化为教学资源，更好地为本科教学服务的一种新途径。     

Negotiating knowledges abroad: non-Western students and the global mobility of knowledge

Taking the Institute for Housing Studies in Rotterdam as a case study, this paper aims to theorise the ways non-Western, international students construct and negotiate knowledges in Western institutions of higher education. It describes the types of knowledges these students identify as characteristic of their learning abroad, distinguishing between the curriculum, knowledge of cultural Others and ‘critical thinking’, and the strategies of incorporation, avoidance and resistance with which students negotiate these knowledges. These knowledges, if contested, are then theorised to facilitate these students’ entry into, and mobility within, globally dispersed epistemic communities.     

中英小学科学课程标准中的科学探究比较

中英两国科学课程标准都强调科学探究是科学课程的核心内容。小学科学课程是以培养科学素养为宗旨的科学启蒙教育课程,只有将科学探究落实到科学教学的各项任务中,才能加深学生对科学的认识。从而使学生掌握科学知识与技能、过程与方法、培养情感态度与价值观,实现科学教育的目标。比较中英两国科学课程标准,英国科学课程标准中关手科学探究的描述值得我们借鉴与学习。     

Memorisation methods in science education: tactics to improve the teaching and learning practice

How can science teachers support students in developing an appropriate declarative knowledge base for solving problems? This article focuses on the question whether the development of students’ memory of scientific propositions is better served by writing propositions down on paper or by making drawings of propositions either by silent or muttering rehearsal. By means of a memorisation experiment with eighth- and ninth-grade students, we answer this question. In this experiment, students received instruction to memorise nine science propositions and to reproduce them afterwards. To support memorisation students were randomly assigned either to a group that received instruction to write each proposition on paper or to a group that received instruction to make a drawing about the content of the proposition. In addition, half of the students in both groups received instruction to mutter and the other half of them received instruction to write or draw in silence. The main conclusion from the experiment is that after four weeks students who had made a drawing remembered significantly more propositions than those who had memorised the propositions by writing them down. Our research further revealed that it did not matter whether students muttered or memorised silently.     

Science education II: Scientific literacy and the Karplus taxonomy

In this essay we explore the role played by the conceptual structure of science in scientific literacy. It is shown that the taxonomy of scientific concepts elucidated by Karplus is a basic structural characteristic of science, and provides a natural means forengaging, as distinct from merely learning, scientific content. Special attention is given to the idea scientific model as being fundamental to the discipline and therefore essential to scientific literacy. The relationship between scientific models and common misconceptions is developed.Based on the second of two talks given at the Paedagogische Hochschule, Ludwigsburg, Germany, in November 1988.     

Family literacy as a third space between home and school: some case studies of practice

In this article, the relationship between literacy practices and spatiality is explored in the context of family literacy. The article draws on fieldwork in family literacy classrooms as part of two evaluations in Croydon and Derbyshire of family learning provision. Methods of evaluation included classroom observations in rural and suburban locations. In addition, teachers and parents were interviewed. In this instance, family learning included literacy and language activities with parents and children in school and nursery settings. These were learning spaces where parents and children collaborated on joint projects including book making, storytelling, the making of visual artefacts and reading and writing activities. The research revealed how family literacy classrooms could be understood as ‘third spaces’, between home and school, offering parents and children discursive opportunities drawing on both domains.     

小学教育专业理科教学改革与学生科学素养的培养

师范教育由三级转向二级,培养小学新师资的任务已由高师承担。小学教师的培养要注重文理渗透,强调人文精神和科学素养的培养。为此,必须深刻认识科学素养的内涵,改革小学教育专业理科教学,加强师资队伍建设,科学设置理科课程,创新教学方法,实施探究性教学,强调实践教学环节,开展丰富多彩的科技活动,努力培养学生的科学素养,提高学生的科学素质。     

试论高校教学对科研的促进作用

在对教学与科研的相互关系的认识中 ,科研对教学的促进作用容易为大家理解 ,而教学对科研的促进作往往不容易为人们所理解。基于此 ,文章从对“教学”含义两个维度的四种理解入手 ,分析了教学促进科研的具体表现及相关条件     

新办本科院校科研发展战略探析

目前新办本科院校正面临着要由原来的注重数量规模扩张向提升办学质量转变的新时期.要适应这种形势发展变化、实现自身的可持续发展和跨越式提升,新办本科院校应当在对教学常抓不懈的基础上,通过对科研工作的大力推进来实现发展的突破,探索出一条符合自身特点的科研兴校、科研强校之路.对新办本科院校来说,发展科研至少有五种战略可供选择：夯实基础战略、内联外合战略、特色化战略、区域化战略、应用化战略.     

Use of the concept of Bildung in the international science education literature,its potential,and implications for teaching and learning

Bildung is a complex educational concept that emerged in Germany in the mid eighteenth century. Especially in Germany and Scandinavia conceptions of Bildung became the general philosophical framework to guide both formal and informal education. Bildung concerns the whole range of education from setting educational objectives in general towards its particular operation in different school subjects, among them science education. In more recent years, the concept of Bildung has slowly begun to be used in the international science and environmental education literature. This paper presents a systematic analysis of the international literature concerning the use of the concept of Bildung, with a view on its meaning in and for science education. At least five versions based on or closely connected to the tradition of Bildung can be identified: (a) Von Humboldt’s classical Bildung, (b) Anglo-American liberal education, (c) Scandinavian folk-Bildung, (d) democratic education, and (e) critical-hermeneutic Bildung. These different understandings of Bildung are discussed in relation to their historical roots, educational theory, critique, and their relation to philosophies of science education, such as different visions of scientific literacy. Based on critical-hermeneutic Bildung, the paper theoretically develops views of critical-reflexive Bildung as an educational metatheory. It is connected to ideas of transformative learning, sustainability education and a Vision III of scientific literacy. Finally, some implications of critical-reflexive Bildung for teaching and learning are discussed.     

我国科学史融入科学教学实践的回顾与展望——基于近十年研究的可视化分析

近年来,科学史在课堂中的重要作用已经得到教师的广泛认同,以2010~2019年核心期刊中科学史教育功能与教学实践相结合的文献作为研究对象,从载文情况、载文内容、关键词共现、社会网络图谱等4个方面进行统计,最终发现,近十年来科学史教育教学实践研究仍以HPS(History Philosophy and Sociology of Science)模式作为科学史融入课堂的主要载体,结合多样化的科学教学模式和教育技术,逐渐呈现出多元化的研究态势。同时,现有的文献欠缺科学史的科学教育功能与教学实践相结合的效果考察研究,其研究内容也有待向纵深方向发展。     

科学发展观与高等教育发展

科学发展观的提出,对于推进我国高等教育发展具有特殊重要的意义。我们要以科学的态度对待科学发展观的提出,正确认识和看待改革开放以来我国高等教育的发展;要以科学发展观为指导,确立科学的高等教育发展观,推进高等教育的科学发展和高等教育研究的深入开展。