Science Learning and Instruction
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Science Learning and Instruction

Taking Advantage of Technology to Promote Knowledge Integration

Marcia C. Linn, Bat-Sheva Eylon

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eBook - ePub

Science Learning and Instruction

Taking Advantage of Technology to Promote Knowledge Integration

Marcia C. Linn, Bat-Sheva Eylon

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About This Book

Science Learning and Instruction describes advances in understanding the nature of science learning and their implications for the design of science instruction. The authors show how design patterns, design principles, and professional development opportunities coalesce to create and sustain effective instruction in each primary scientific domain: earth science, life science, and physical science. Calling for more in depth and less fleeting coverage of science topics in order to accomplish knowledge integration, the book highlights the importance of designing the instructional materials, the examples that are introduced in each scientific domain, and the professional development that accompanies these materials. It argues that unless all these efforts are made simultaneously, educators cannot hope to improve science learning outcomes. The book also addresses how many policies, including curriculum, standards, guidelines, and standardized tests, work against the goal of integrative understanding, and discusses opportunities to rethink science education policies based on research findings from instruction that emphasizes such understanding.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2011
ISBN
9781136655968

1

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Make a prediction about some everyday science phenomenon. Think about how you learn best. Jot down the methods of instruction that you think have had the greatest impact on your understanding of science. Note any approaches to learning or instruction that have been particularly unsuccessful or inefficient for you.
Recently we found that two-thirds of students in a local middle school reported that they preferred learning science by doing virtual experiments with dynamic, interactive visualizations of global climate change compared to learning from textbooks, teachers, or peers (Corliss & Spitulnik, 2008). Only 5% selected learning by reading or studying and 3% selected learning from the teacher. Most students report that inquiry activities such as doing projects (often with peers), testing ideas (often in science museums), and exploring conundrums (often with encouragement from their teachers) have been their most effective means of learning. Students tend to believe that activities with uncertain outcomes, involving collaboration, and personal initiative lead to more learning than do more traditional school activities.

How Children Learn

In this book, we argue that children develop promising conjectures, beliefs, ideas, and views about scientific phenomena from observing, interacting, and probing the natural world. They often use colloquial language to communicate complex ideas in ways that amuse adults yet reflect their observational and reasoning skills. For example, 4-year-old Ben was fascinated by dinosaurs and curious about why they died. His favorite dinosaur was Pachycephalosaurus. After reading a book about habitat destruction, Ben realized that the habitat of the dinosaurs became colder. He speculated about dinosaur extinction, concluding that the Pachycephalosaurus died because, “they did not know how to put on their sweaters.”
Ben constructed a causal account of dinosaur extinction based on available information. Taking into account the linguistic and conceptual affordances at the command of a 4-year-old, such reasoning could be seen as a legitimate effort to make sense of the available information. We argue that science instruction can build on the ideas that students construct and sustain the enthusiasm and intellectual skills that children use naturally to explore the world.
Students develop a repertoire of ideas such as Ben’s from their efforts to make sense of the natural world. Ben has other explanations for the fate of the dinosaurs and will add new ones as he learns more about their habitat and habits.
Rather than having a single idea about a topic like insulation, density, or force, students have multiple ideas (see Box 1.1). These ideas are often connected to a specific context. Thus ideas about insulation may be connected to a practice (like going outside in the cold) or a technology (like a thermos). When students attempt to integrate their ideas they use complex reasoning processes (like applying a successful practice, such as putting on a sweater, that works in one context to solve a problem in a new context), draw on evidence (such as evidence that sweaters keep you warm), and make links (like linking the habits of dinosaurs and children). Students also need opportunities to gather new information and modify their ideas (like distinguishing between domesticated animals who wear sweaters and wild animals who lack sweaters). This process is crucial for success in school, in life, and even in science classes.

Box 1.1 Repertoire of Ideas

Repertoire of ideas held by students for selected science topics

Students hold a repertoire of ideas about each science topic.
Howe (1998) found that upper elementary age students generated over 200 ideas relevant to buoyancy.
These included ideas about:
• Shape (round, square)
• Orientation (balanced, stuck to the top)
• Surface (smooth, prickly)
• Material (metal, wood)
• Contents (holes, points)
• Temperature (hotter or colder than the liquid)
• Movement (still, pushed) of the object
Metz (2000) identified ideas held by 2nd and 4th graders about behavior of organisms such as crickets. Students had many ideas about:
• Frequency of chirping explained by temperature, light, both.
• Choice of destination based on:
○ Location (natural habitat, asphalt, sand, shade)
○ Proximity to others (crickets, kids, insects)
○ Weather (heat, cold, dampness)
Ryoo (2010) identified ideas about photosynthesis among 6th graders:
Plant use the heat energy from the Sun to grow. Plants need sunlight, water, and fresh soil to grow. Energy is involved in the plant’s growing because the Sun gives off heat energy and it helps all kinds of plants grow to help us survive.
Plants gets energy from the soil. The energy is transformed into nutrients. The energy in the plants is made into cells which are used in the plant. The energy ends up making the plant grow.
The plants use the sunlight so it can grow and become healthy. the plants also use the sunlight energy to get vitamin D.
The energy comes the Sun, the energy is transformed into photosynthesis.
The plants get energy from the Sun and when they get watered. The energy is transformed into a living organism after it grows. The energy in the plants make it grow very big. he energy from the original plant gets transferred over to the fruit or vegetable that grows from it.
Plants get their energy from the Sun and when the Sun shines on the plant it grows from energy. When the energy ends it goes into the soil.
Plant use sunlight to grow. But How? Plants get energy to grow, from the Sun. The energy is transformed by the chloroplast. The energy in the plants use it s food. Where the energy ends up is in the air.
Plants get energy from chloroplasts in their cells. The chloroplasts make sunlight into food and food makes energy. Then the energy in the plants are released and It turns into oxygen that humans breathe in to live. The “energy” (oxygen) ends up turning into carbon dioxide as we breathe it out. The plants take the carbon dioxide into their systems and turn it into energy.
Curiosity about scientific events motivates children to explore, observe, connect, and question their ideas. The goal of discovery learning (Dewey, 1901), constructivist instruction (Piaget, 1970b; Vygotsky, 1978), and inquiry learning (e.g., Linn, Davis, & Bell, 2004) is to sustain this process of investigation in science courses. Yet, this approach is frequently abandoned because decision makers believe it takes too long, costs too much, or does not work.

Absorption versus Knowledge Integration

In spite of these examples and testimonials, most science instruction implements the absorption approach: Instruction transmits information in lectures, textbooks, and cookbook-like science activities. Students are expected to “absorb the information.” When absorption fails, it is common to argue that (a) students are not sufficiently motivated or do not work hard enough, (b) students need to develop a larger vocabulary, master some set of facts or details, or develop more powerful reasoning skills before they can understand the material, or (c) students are inhibited by misconceptions or naïve ideas that interfere with their ability to absorb the new knowledge. The absorption approach guides the design of most textbooks, lectures, and even laboratory experiences. In this book we argue that instruction should be designed using a knowledge integration (KI)* approach that involves building on personal ideas, using evidence to distinguish alternatives, and reflecting on alternative accounts of scientific phenomena. We document the widespread use of the absorption approach and provide evidence to support the KI view.
The absorption approach aligns with many beliefs people have about science learning. Scientists require years of research to discover the complex and coherent insights about science concepts. In order to bring learners up to speed, instructors reasonably argue that it is efficient to simply tell their students about all the prior research and findings within a domain. Once they have laid out an elegant explanation, instructors and authors generally assume that their students have understood the material.
However, assessments of many courses refute this assumption. For example, in physics the Force Concept Inventory (FCI, Hestenes, Wells, & Swackhamer, 1992) and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE, Thornton & Sokoloff, 1998) show that most students cannot reason with the ideas their instructors transmitted in physics courses. These tests use student explanations of everyday examples of force and motion such as the trajectories of baseballs to construct multiple-choice items. Instructors are surprised when these assessments show that most of their students lack understanding of Newtonian laws of motion. Often the students are successful on textbook questions involving the applications of formulas but cannot extend classroom ideas to typical situations. At first, instructors might conclude that their students are unmotivated, confused by complex vocabulary, or beguiled by misconceptions. However, an intensive research program has convinced instructors that new course activities based on inquiry learning and peer exchange can improve outcomes (Crouch & Mazur, 2001; Hake, 1998; Thornton & Sokoloff, 1998). These new approaches engage students in using their physics ideas in complex, everyday situations and challenge students to interpret observations of the natural world using physics principles.
Similar findings have been reported for other important science topics such as students’ epistemological views about the nature and role of empirical investigations. Developing and refining new scientific methods and gaining insight into scientific advance in a specific discipline typically takes years of study. Instructors and most science standards argue that students need to learn the scientific method and appreciate the nature of science. Following the absorption approach, textbooks explain the scientific method in generalities and often highlight the main steps scientists follow. Students often practice the steps in classroom experiments. Even when exercises specifically address the logic of science, they generally present the logic in a narrow context such as a puzzle or game. As a result, students do not experience the complexity of science and are not prepared to analyze unintended consequences or side effects of experiments.
Assessments such as the Maryland Physics Expectations (MPEX, Redish, Saul, & Steinberg, 1998) and the Views About Science Survey (VASS, Halloun, 1996), constructed in a similar manner to the Force Concept Inventory, show that students generally have a superficial understanding of the nature of research in mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry. Rather than gaining an appreciation of the foundations of scientific inference and evidentiary discourse, students in typical courses are often convinced that science is a mechanical process that proceeds smoothly and formulaically. They do not appreciate the controversy and uncertainty surrounding most empirical work (Kuhn, 1970; Latour, 1987; Longino, 1990; Thagard, 1992). Students who see science as unfolding rather than emerging from inquiry are unlikely to question information from authorities or to become fascinated by science.
An unintended consequence of instruction based on transmitting information is that students often add new ideas but do not distinguish them from their existing ideas. The new ideas are added to the repertoire of ideas held by students but isolated from other ideas. Furthermore, analyses of science textbooks in many countries shows that science is presented as a fragmented and fractured set of facts (see Chapter 2). Students may not even appreciate that scientists aspire to a coherent body of knowledge.
As a result, when an opportunity to apply a scientific idea arises, students tend to use the ideas they already have rather than the new, fragmented ideas they have encountered. Since students have many more opportunities to revisit their personally developed ideas, they tend to remember those but forget the ideas from science class. It is no wonder that adults regularly assert that they have forgotten everything they learned in science class.
Instructors often seek to transmit elegant, well organized accounts of science rather than illustrating the dilemmas they faced or the wrong paths they followed in reaching the insights. Often these elegant solutions are captured in formulas, symbolic representations like the periodic table, or complex sequences of rules. Such an approach makes it difficult for students to figure out how the science in the classroom connects to their everyday experiences. The frustration of students often manifests itself in constant complaints that they will never need the information they are learning.
Instructors often respond to this concern by arguing that students have not developed the logical capacities necessary to understand the material. This view is often buttressed by evidence from research of developmental psychologists such as Piaget (1970a). Yet, as Bruner (1962) so compellingly argued, much research shows that students can learn complex ideas when they are presented in such a way that they connect to the ideas students have developed by observing the natural world. In this book, we illustrate how this process might work.
Thus, the goal of transmitting complex information to students is appealing to textbook designers, lecturers, and curriculum authors. Sometimes the transmitted information is elegant and inaccessible. At other times it is fragmented and disconnected. In this book, we argue that science learning would be far more effective if students had the opportunity to integrate new information with their many, contradictory ideas. We suggest that students need, as a goal, the view that science ideas can be coherent. When students seek coherence, they use evidence to sort out the conflicting ideas. They seek to apply the abstract ideas to personally relevant situations. And, they appreciate the beauty and excitement of science.
The absorption approach does succeed for a few learners, but probably not because they have absorbed the information. Those who succeed in conventional approaches to instruction most likely act like experts, in that they evaluate what they hear, seek to clarify the ideas they learn for themselves, and test the new ideas against their existing views (Slotta, Chi, & Joram, 1995). These students frequently ask questions and interact with instructors. Not surprisingly, such students provide their teachers with convincing success stories in support of the absorption approach, which may serve to reinforce its primacy in the classroom.
Our goal in this book is to make it feasible for all students to become autonomous learners who view scientific evidence critically and endeavor to develop a coherent view of scientific phenomena. We also seek to help teachers adopt a role of intelligent facilitator of discourse and inquiry, rather than all-knowing disseminator of facts. Clearly, this will amount to a transformation of teaching and learning in science classrooms. But many have called for such a radical reform (Collins & Halverson, 2009), and indeed there is a wealth of evidence from the research literature in education and the broader learning sciences that the absorption model is antiquated and insufficient for the task demands placed upon science education in the 21st century. We hope that this book will lead the reader into his or her own inquiries about learning and instruction, inspiring deeper insights about KI and a wealth of new approaches for inquiry in the science classroom.
Review the predictions that you made above. Did you include activities that involved absorbing new science content? Were they successful or unsuccessful?

Implications of Absorption

The absorption approach fails to meet the needs of students or their teachers. Expecting students to absorb information implies that their pre-existing ideas are of limited value. Furthermore, most stude...

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