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.     

A Framework for Re‐thinking Learning in Science from Recent Cognitive Science Perspectives

Recent accounts by cognitive scientists of factors affecting cognition imply the need to reconsider current dominant conceptual theories about science learning. These new accounts emphasize the role of context, embodied practices, and narrative‐based representation rather than learners’ cognitive constructs. In this paper we analyse data from a longitudinal study of primary school children’s learning to outline a framework based on these contemporary accounts and to delineate key points of difference from conceptual change perspectives. The findings suggest this framework provides strong theoretical and practical insights into how children learn and the key role of representational negotiation in this learning. We argue that the nature and process of conceptual change can be re‐interpreted in terms of the development of students’ representational resources.     

人文科学和博物馆：定义和联系

通常在文章的开头要首先阐明自己的态度 ,以使读者准确了解你所要谈论的问题。这篇文章关注两方面内容 :一个机构———博物馆和一个抽象的概念———人文科学。首先我想探究一下我们所说的人文科学和博物馆的含义 ,然后再把两者结合起来考虑。我要声明我并不是博物馆专家 ,而是国家人文科学基金会所称之为“人文学者”的那类人 ,意思是教某种人文学科课程的大学教师。我所涉及的领域是美国的文学和历史。对于博物馆 ,我有限的经历主要来自于大学博物馆和国家历史博物馆。我下面要谈的某些问题可能对博物馆教育工作者来说已经过时了 ,但对我…     

Stories of reading: Inside and outside the texts of portfolios

This essay employs Barbara Herrnstein Smith's notion of “contingencies of value,” the idea that evaluations of text vary because our readings take place in specific contexts and are shaped by cultural and historical exigencies. In this study, we apply this notion to the reading of student texts in a college composition portfolio assessment. Through an analysis of taped teacher discussions of students' writing and an examination of student responses to the grading process, we conclude that in every reading of a text (but especially in the reading of the multiple texts of a portfolio) readers posit an “implied author.” That is, based on their reading of a single text or portfolio, teacher-readers construct a persona that represents the author, and this projection can strongly influence the reader's evaluation of student work. Group discussions of portfolios allow teachers to expose and explore the value-laden nature of these judgments.     

Stories of reform in science education: commentary on opp(reg)ressive policies and tempered radicals

This response to the two papers (by Rodriguez and Carlone et al.) on science education reform acknowledges first the coherence of the arguments presented around four reform narratives; that of the process of becoming science-enthusiastic, the nature of beliefs of science reform teachers, the barriers to reform, and the institutional expressions of these barriers. In the commentary I first discuss the reform ‘problem’ in terms of two interacting issues—the purposes of school science and the value placed on it in an elementary school curriculum. The insights produced in these papers are then used to reflect on a range of experiences and current policy debates in Australia. Finally, in this commentary, I point out: (a) the relationship of the papers to the reform issue of opposition to Standards Based Science (SBS) from proponents’ traditional conceptions of science education, discussing how this more specific reform question relates to the two papers; and (b) the singular nature of the I-meanings characterised in the Carlone et al. paper, describing (using Australian examples) how the notions of tempered radicals and I-meanings might also be used to characterise complexities in the processes of school science reform.     

Educational Design Framework for a Web-Based Interface to Visualise Authentic Cosmological “Big Data” in High School

Journal of Science Education and Technology - The changing landscape of science and science education has provided an impetus to re-imagine how science can be taught in schools. The dawn of the Big...