A learning model for science education: Deriving teaching strategies

A learning model for science education was proposed by Appleton (1989), based on Osborne and Wittrock’s generative learning theory (1983) and the Piagetian notions of disequilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation. The model incorporated many aspects of difficulties in learning science experienced by students, as revealed in the LISP projects and similar research. This paper examines how the model may be used to derive teaching strategies: components of the model are analysed in terms of specific types of teacher interventions which could facilitate students’ progress to accommodation. Some established teaching strategies are analysed in terms of these interventions. Specializations: primary teacher education, teaching strategies in science.     

Globalisation and science education: Rethinking science education reforms

Like Lemke (J Res Sci Teach 38:296–316, 2001), I believe that science education has not looked enough at the impact of the changing theoretical and global landscape by which it is produced and shaped. Lemke makes a sound argument for science education to look beyond its own discourses toward those like cultural studies and politics, and to which I would add globalisation theory and relevant educational studies. Hence, in this study I draw together a range of investigations to argue that globalisation is indeed implicated in the discourses of science education, even if it remains underacknowledged and undertheorized. Establishing this relationship is important because it provides different frames of reference from which to investigate many of science education's current concerns, including those new forces that now have a direct impact on science classrooms. For example, one important question to investigate is the degree to which current science education improvement discourses are the consequences of quality research into science teaching and learning, or represent national and local responses to global economic restructuring and the imperatives of the supranational institutions that are largely beyond the control of science education. Developing globalisation as a theoretical construct to help formulate new questions and methods to examine these questions can provide science education with opportunities to expand the conceptual and analytical frameworks of much of its present and future scholarship. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Innovating science teaching with a transformative learning model

Abstract

This exploratory study aimed to describe the impact of the ‘Science in Family project’, as a transformative learning model for science teachers trying to improve student’s attitudes toward STEM subjects. This study took place in a public elementary school in Monterrey, Mexico, which has been developing this project for more than thirteen years with students from 4th, 5th and 6th grade. We used participant observation and interviews with four families whose children are students of this elementary school, and with one family whose sons were students of this school some years ago. Results showed that there is a relationship between positive attitudes towards science in students who were exposed to transformative learning models of teaching. Two of the participants took steps to follow science related careers. This study helps to illuminate the extent to which teacher education models influence students’ attitudes and how positive attitudes to science are influenced by the use of learning by doing projects.     

Can science education be scientific?. Notes toward a viable theory of science teaching

What science education needs, says the author, is a viable theory of science teaching to serve as a base for decision making. And it will never develop until we abandon common sense as a criterion.     

New models for the learning process: Beyond constructivism?

A biographical note on André Giordan appears on page 23.     

Social constructivism: Infusion into the multicultural science education research agenda

This article focuses on (a) theoretical underpinnings of social constructivism and multicultural education and (b) aspects of social constructivism that can provide frameworks for research in multicultural science education. According to the author, multicultural science education is “a field of inquiry with constructs, methodologies, and processes aimed at providing equitable opportunities for all students to learn quality science.” Multicultural science education research continues to be influenced by class, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, and different lifestyles; however, another appropriate epistemology for this area of research is social constructivism. The essence of social constructivism and its implications for multicultural science education research includes an understanding of whatever realities might be constructed by individuals from various cultural groups and how these realities can be reconstituted, if necessary, to include a scientific reality. Hence, multicultural science education should be a field of study in which many science education researchers are generating new knowledge. The author strives to persuade other researchers to expand their research and teaching efforts into multicultural science education, a blending of social constructivism with multicultural science education. This blending is illustrated in the final section of this article. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Beyond conceptual change learning in science education: focusing on transfer,durability and metacognition

The frequently encountered problems of students being unable to utilize schoollearned science in different contexts, and of students forgetting what they have learned in a short time after initial instruction, are two important problems for classroom practitioners. This paper advocates a shift in focus of conceptual change learning research in order to address these problems. It draws upon four overlapping areas: conceptual change learning is the broad subject area that sets the epistemological background; transfer and durability of scientific conceptions are the two problem areas under scrutiny, while metacognition is seen as potential mediator of improvement. The paper offers a brief review of existing literature on the four areas; it proposes confronting the two problems by incorporating metacognitive instruction in the learning environment of primary school science; and it reports on recently completed research.     

Chafing borderlands: obstacles for science teaching and learning in preschool teacher education

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This study examines preservice preschool teachers’ university science education experience. The empirical data are from a research and intervention...     

Student teachers' attitudes toward science and science teaching

Attitudes toward science and science teaching are the subject of a mounting body of research on teachers. A widely used instrument developed by researchers in the United States appears to be relevant to the Australian context and was considered appropriate for measuring attitudes of preservice student teachers attending a College of Advanced Education in Brisbane. The findings suggest that much more effort needs to be concentrated on fostering desirable attitudes toward science and the teaching of science among future primary school teachers.     

论开放教育教学模式的构建

“开放教育”决不是一种孤立的教育模式，实践中的“开放教育”与“函授教育”、“传统面授教育”有着千丝万缕的联系。以“教师为主导、学生为中心”的建构主义教学模式是更能切合电大开放教育实际的教学模式。     

Writing for learning in secondary science: Rethinking practices

There is now considerable debate over the kinds of writing tasks that will enable secondary students to learn about science and to demonstrate scientific understanding. Advocates of modernist and postmodernist perspectives propose different genres as necessary to achieve very contrasting agendas. This paper presents an overview and analysis of the claims and counterclaims of these competing positions. Drawing on this overview and research on writing for learning including the authors' classroom-based research, a model is proposed to guide writing for learning in junior secondary science.     

Effect of science teaching on the young child's concept of piagetian physical causality: Animism and dynamism

The purpose of this research was to determine whether the young child's understanding of physical causality is affected by school science instruction. Sixty-four subjects, four and one-half through seven years of age, received 300 min of instruction designed to affect the subject's conception of causality as reflected in animism and dynamism. Instruction took place for 30 min per day on ten successive school days. Pretesting was done to allow a stratified random sample to be based on vocabulary level and developmental stage as well as on age and gender. Post-testing consisted of testing of developmental level and level within the causal relations of animism and dynamism. Significant differences (1.05 level) were found between the experimental and control groups for animism. Within the experimental group, males differed significantly (1.001 level) from females. The elimination of animism appeared to have occurred. For dynamism, significant differences (0.05 level) were found only between concrete operational subjects in the experimental and control groups, indicating a concrete level of operations was necessary if dynamism was to be affected. However, a review of interview protocols indicated that subjects classified as nonanimistic had learned to apply a definition rather than to think in a nonanimistic manner.     

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.