Unintended knowledge learnt in primary science practical lessons

This study explored the different kinds of unintended learning in primary school practical science lessons. In this study, unintended learning has been defined as student learning that was found to occur that was not included in the teachers learning objectives for that specific lesson. A total of 22 lessons, taught by five teachers in Korean primary schools with 10- to 12-year-old students, were audio-and video recorded. Pre-lesson interviews with the teachers were conducted to ascertain their intended learning objectives. Students were asked to write short memos after the lesson about what they learnt. Post-lesson interviews with students and teachers were undertaken. What emerged was that there were three types of knowledge that students learnt unintentionally: factual knowledge gained by phenomenon-based reasoning, conceptual knowledge gained by relation- or model-based reasoning, and procedural knowledge acquired by practice. Most unintended learning found in this study fell into the factual knowledge and only a few cases of conceptual knowledge were found. Cases of both explicit procedural knowledge and implicit procedural knowledge were found. This study is significant in that it suggests how unintended learning in practical work can be facilitated as an educative opportunity for meaningful learning by exploring what and how students learnt.     

What Do Students Gain by Engaging in Socioscientific Inquiry?

The question of what students gain by engaging in socioscientific inquiry is addressed in two ways. First, relevant literature is surveyed to build the case that socioscientific issues (SSI) can serve as useful contexts for teaching and learning science content. Studies are reviewed which document student gains in discipline specific content knowledge as well as understandings of the nature of science. SSI are also positioned as vehicles for addressing citizenship education within science classrooms. Although the promotion of citizenship goals seems widely advocated, the specifics of how this may be accomplished remain underdeveloped. To address this issue, we introduce socioscientific reasoning as a construct which captures a suite of practices fundamental to the negotiation of SSI. In the second phase of the project, interviews with 24 middle school students from classes engaged in socioscientific inquiry serve as the basis for the development of an emergent rubric for socioscientific reasoning. Variation in practices demonstrated by this sample are explored and implications drawn for advancing socioscientific reasoning as an educationally meaningful and assessable construct.     

Some assembly required: How scientific explanations are constructed during clinical interviews

This article is concerned with commonsense science knowledge, the informally gained knowledge of the natural world that students possess prior to formal instruction in a scientific discipline. Although commonsense science has been the focus of substantial study for more than two decades, there are still profound disagreements about its nature and origin, and its role in science learning. What is the reason that it has been so difficult to reach consensus? We believe that the problems run deep; there are difficulties both with how the field has framed questions and the way that it has gone about seeking answers. In order to make progress, we believe it will be helpful to focus on one type of research instrument—the clinical interview—that is employed in the study of commonsense science. More specifically, we argue that we should seek to understand and model, on a moment‐by‐moment basis, student reasoning as it occurs in the interviews employed to study commonsense science. To illustrate and support this claim, we draw on a corpus of interviews with middle school students in which the students were asked questions pertaining to the seasons and climate phenomena. Our analysis of this corpus is based on what we call the mode‐node framework. In this framework, student reasoning is seen as drawing on a set of knowledge elements we call nodes, and this set produces temporary explanatory structures we call dynamic mental constructs. Furthermore, the analysis of our corpus seeks to highlight certain patterns of student reasoning that occur during interviews, patterns in what we call conceptual dynamics. These include patterns in which students can be seen to search through available knowledge (nodes), in which they assemble nodes into an explanation, and in which they converge on and shift among alternative explanations. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 166–198, 2012     

Negotiating the context of online in-service training: ‘expert’ and ‘non-expert’ footings

This paper focuses on how people working in the Swedish food production industry engage in in-service training by means of computer-mediated communication. The empirical material consists of archived chat log files from a course concerning quality assurance and food safety hazards control in the preparation and handling of foodstuff. Drawing on Goffman and the concepts framing and footing, the analytical focus in this study is on how participants frame the web-based training activity, and what participation frameworks they enact in the activity. The analysis shows that the participants enact and shift footings when they write, and these shifts in footings result in a hybridity of framings. However, as the analysis also shows a thematic continuity and a progression in the online discussions are rendered possible as the participants draw on a participation framework of one more knowledgeable recipient (teacher and/or representative of the authority) and some less knowledgeable recipients (students and/or representatives of branch organisations). In this manner, shifts in footing are found to be a productive means of serving both specific communicative and pedagogical purposes in the online in-service training environment.     

Patterns of informal reasoning in the context of socioscientific decision making

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a theoretical knowledge base through research by examining factors salient to science education reform and practice in the context of socioscientific issues. The study explores how individuals negotiate and resolve genetic engineering dilemmas. A qualitative approach was used to examine patterns of informal reasoning and the role of morality in these processes. Thirty college students participated individually in two semistructured interviews designed to explore their informal reasoning in response to six genetic engineering scenarios. Students demonstrated evidence of rationalistic, emotive, and intuitive forms of informal reasoning. Rationalistic informal reasoning described reason‐based considerations; emotive informal reasoning described care‐based considerations; and intuitive reasoning described considerations based on immediate reactions to the context of a scenario. Participants frequently relied on combinations of these reasoning patterns as they worked to resolve individual socioscientific scenarios. Most of the participants appreciated at least some of the moral implications of their decisions, and these considerations were typically interwoven within an overall pattern of informal reasoning. These results highlight the need to ensure that science classrooms are environments in which intuition and emotion in addition to reason are valued. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 112–138, 2005     

Pedagogical reasoning: the foundation of the professional knowledge of teaching

ABSTRACT

Much of the debate about that which comprises teachers’ professional knowledge has been important in the academic literature but does not necessarily reflect the reality of how they think as they construct the knowledge that underpins their practice. Typically, teachers are not encouraged to spend time talking about teaching in ways that are theoretically robust, or to unpack their teaching in order to show others what they know, how and why. Because they are busy ‘doing teaching’ they are not commonly afforded opportunities to ‘unpack’ their practice to explore and articulate the reasoning underpinning what they do. This paper argues that the essence of teachers’ professional knowledge is bound up in the teaching procedures they employ and that knowledge is accessible and demonstrable through the pedagogical reasoning that underpins their decision-making, actions and intents; all of which come to the fore when their pedagogical reasoning is examined. If teaching is to be more highly valued, it is important to more closely examine the nature of teachers’ pedagogical reasoning as it offers a window into the complex and sophisticated knowledge of practice that influences what they do, how and why.     

Connecting Classroom Science with Everyday Life: Teachers’ Attempts and Students’ Insights

This multiple case study examines how teachers request students’ use of their content knowledge and conceptual understandings from out-of-school experiences while reasoning about science concepts and the ways in which students perceive and respond to these requests. Three middle school teachers and a total of 57 middle school students participated in this study. The data collection involved classroom observations and multiple interviews with each of the teachers individually and with small groups of students. The findings indicate that the students appreciate the usefulness of making relevant connections between their in-school and out-of-school learning, but seldom do so during science lessons. We also found that teachers’ attempts to facilitate these types of connections during classroom discourse events involved the use of analogies, examples, or questions. Finally, the findings also indicate that students often recognize teachers’ requests but seldom relate to these requests in the way the teacher intends.     

“I was giving someone who didn’t have a voice a voice”: exploring qualitative mini-research projects as a tool to teach students about aging

ABSTRACT

In the study of gerontology, fieldwork with older adults is often used to enhance students’ understanding of the aging process. While assignments based on interactions with older adults are a common practice in teaching students enrolled in gerontology studies, we know less about the impact of such activities on students from other disciplines. This paper summarizes students’ experiences with an assignment offered to a diverse cohort of undergraduate students who took a course in social gerontology. To complete this assignment, students had to interview an older adult, summarize the life story of the participant, apply a theoretical perspective to the older adult’s life story, and reflect on the process. Analyzing data derived from 72 assignments and 10 semi-structured interviews with students who were enrolled in the course, this paper examines students’ experiences with this assignment. Specifically, we identify what aspects of the assignment students found beneficial, what aspects they found challenging, and in what ways this assignment helped students to enhance their understanding of aging. Our findings suggest that students found it challenging to recruit an older adult for an interview and struggled with the semi-structured nature of the interview process. All students found the actual interview process to be extremely rewarding and beneficial for their learning. In discussion, we provide some recommendations on how to offer this type of assignment to a diverse group of students enrolling in the courses on social gerontology.     

Practical reasoning and science education: Implications for theory and practice

Practical reasoning is a fundamental competence required for everyday decision-making as well as for the production of scientific knowledge. However, very little attention is given to developing this competence in school science classrooms or in educational research programs. In this paper we explain the tradition of practical reasoning and its relevance to science and science education. We then suggest ways in which practical reasoning may be developed in students such that they are enabled to better understand how scientific knowledge is produced and how they may be better able to contribute to improving scientific practices.     

The ‘third age’ perspective: enrichment and informal modes of learning in an outdoor sketching group for older adults

The proposed benefits of participatory arts for older adults continue to attract empirical attention, but how informal group participation aids personal enrichment is not yet fully understood. This qualitative case study of a University of the Third Age ‘outdoor sketching group’ explores the meanings its members attach to art-making in retirement and how this informal context supports their preferred modes of learning. Hermeneutic interviews with six members elicited their personal framings of what it means to pursue sketching. Participant observations of group activities and learning interactions therein afforded insights into how this group meets the needs of its members. The emergent theme from interviews, ‘cultivating dispositions’, represents what they consider to be a central endeavour in retirement. It reflects the judicious selecting and shedding of activities depending on whether they are deemed conducive to personal enrichment. Members hone and nurture dispositions they perceive as befitting the way they wish to pursue art-making. The group’s egalitarian ethos, whereby expertise is distributed among the group rather than attached to an instructor, is valued. Within peer dialogue, ways of enmeshing oneself with certain artistic orientations are exchanged. These serve as one of various communal resources members utilise to cultivate their own desired dispositions.     

Secret codes: the hidden curriculum of semantic web technologies

There is a long tradition in education of examination of the hidden curriculum, those elements which are implicit or tacit to the formal goals of education. This article draws upon that tradition to open up for investigation the hidden curriculum and assumptions about students and knowledge that are embedded in the coding undertaken to facilitate learning through information technologies, and emerging ‘semantic technologies’ in particular. Drawing upon an empirical study of case-based pedagogy in higher education, we examine the ways in which code becomes an actor in both enabling and constraining knowledge, reasoning, representation and students. The article argues that how this occurs, and to what effect, is largely left unexamined and becomes part of the hidden curriculum of electronically mediated learning that can be more explicitly examined by positioning technologies in general, and code in particular, as actors rather than tools. This points to a significant research agenda in technology enhanced learning.     

Model-Based Knowing: How Do Students Ground Their Understanding About Climate Systems in Agent-Based Computer Models?

This paper gives a grounded cognition account of model-based learning of complex scientific knowledge related to socio-scientific issues, such as climate change. It draws on the results from a study of high school students learning about the carbon cycle through computational agent-based models and investigates two questions: First, how do students ground their understanding about the phenomenon when they learn and solve problems with computer models? Second, what are common sources of mistakes in students’ reasoning with computer models? Results show that students ground their understanding in computer models in five ways: direct observation, straight abstraction, generalisation, conceptualisation, and extension. Students also incorporate into their reasoning their knowledge and experiences that extend beyond phenomena represented in the models, such as attitudes about unsustainable carbon emission rates, human agency, external events, and the nature of computational models. The most common difficulties of the students relate to seeing the modelled scientific phenomenon and connecting results from the observations with other experiences and understandings about the phenomenon in the outside world. An important contribution of this study is the constructed coding scheme for establishing different ways of grounding, which helps to understand some challenges that students encounter when they learn about complex phenomena with agent-based computer models.

     

Trusting the method: an ethnographic search for policy in practice in an Australian primary school

The apparent simplicity of ethnographic methods – studying people in their normal life setting, going beyond what might be said in surveys and interviews to observe everyday practices – is deceptive. Anthropological knowledge is gained through fieldwork and through pursuing a reflexive flexible approach. This study carried out in a non-government primary school in Perth, Western Australia focused on the processes used by the teachers to implement reporting policy. The focus of this paper is not on the data of the research, but on the experiences of a researcher in the field for the first time. Despite being aware of what Schweder (1997) describes as the need to be open to the surprise of ethnography, the events which followed my first hours in the field still managed to disturb my equilibrium as they proceeded to unfold in unexpected ways. The factors which influenced the outcome of the research were serendipitous and for the researcher were vital in my initiation into ethnographic methods.     

Education of women with disabilities in Pakistan: enhanced agency,unfulfilled aspirations

This paper examines the extent to which the capability approach captures the complexity of the lives of young women with disabilities in Pakistan, particularly in relation to their education. Focusing on their educational experiences and outcomes, we examine the ways in which education shaped what these young women were able to achieve – what they wanted to do and be. In undertaking this research, we adopted a collaborative, qualitative approach involving in-depth interviews with six young women with disabilities. All these women were interesting and exemplary cases, given their very high levels of education. Our findings suggest that the capability approach provides a framework that is able to capture the educational experiences–outcomes journey of the young women. However, also interesting to note is how the expansion of their capabilities is bounded, primarily because their freedoms are intrinsically linked to their sociocultural positioning and largely negative perceptions of disability in the wider society.     

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     

Exploring college students’ cognitive patterns during reasoning*

This research aimed to investigate the nature of cognitive processes when college students reason about evidence on global climate change (GCC). Twenty-six undergraduate students participated in this qualitative study, where they were interviewed to evaluate competing arguments on key issues related to GCC and discuss their own perspectives. Constant comparative analysis of data from think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews revealed three patterns of reasoning: minimum reasoning, constrained reasoning, and deliberative reasoning. Minimum reasoning demonstrated that participants predominantly favoured arguments which supported their own beliefs, with limited reasoning about the relative correctness of opposing arguments. Constrained reasoning showed participants’ emphasis on surface features of evidence on GCC rather than its scientific underpinnings. In contrast, deliberative reasoning involved more sophisticated cognitive efforts in coordinating evidence and claims, and a key characteristic of this pattern was in-depth statistical and causal reasoning. The current findings added to our understanding of college students’ reasoning processes when they are faced with controversial issues like GCC. This work contributed to current efforts in using cognitive research to inform science and environmental education, and laid a foundation for future endeavours in promoting scientific reasoning and argumentation in climate change education.     

How and why do students of higher education participate in online seminars?

Online education is continuing to gain popularity in educational institutions and organizations. Hitherto, most research has occurred at aggregated levels, while few researchers have studied how and why individuals participate in online education. It is essential to examine individual perceptions and relationships in order to understand how students behave in relation to others. This paper investigates how students of higher education participate in online seminars and why they participate in certain ways. An online class that attended asynchronous and synchronous online seminars was studied. Electronic logs were used to examine how students participated and interviews were used to illustrate why they participated. It was revealed that the participation of students varied between aspects such as exchanging information, managing tasks and providing social support and the emphasis of these aspects were related to the tool they communicated through. A number of participation inhibitors were identified and it was also suggested how these inhibitors can be addressed.     

Conversation and Conflict: Supporting Authentic Dialogue in the Classroom

This paper presents an exploratory study of MSW students who self‐identified as having political/religious world views differing from what they perceived to be dominant at their school. A goal was to learn about conditions that fostered or inhibited authentic speech for those students. A secondary goal was to learn how students dealt with their political views differing from political positions taken by the profession. Eleven student volunteers participated in structured interviews. Qualitative analysis of these allowed the construction of themes concerning both how faculty may discourage and how faculty support expression of minority views.     

In what ways are teacher candidates being prepared to teach about the environment? A case study from Wisconsin

There is an urgent need for primary and secondary students to develop awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and an environmental ethic necessary to undertake environmental issues and problems. The need to adequately prepare teachers to teach about the environment, and the challenges the field of environmental education (EE) faces lead us to the research question: In what ways are teacher candidates being prepared to teach primary and secondary students about the environment? Using a case study approach of the 33 teacher education programs in Wisconsin (USA), we explored the ways in which EE is integrated into teacher preparation. Surveys, interviews, and the analysis of course documents (e.g. syllabi, assignment sheets) were used to identify two primary ways in which EE is being integrated – courses and activities. After examining the commonalities among programs that are doing more than typical (such as using multiple ways to include EE or having high quality EE), we explored the role organizational resources – material, human, and social – play in teacher education programs.