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1.
In response to international concerns about scientific literacy and students’ waning interest in school science, this study investigated the effects of a science‐writing project about the socioscientific issue (SSI) of biosecurity on the development of students’ scientific literacy. Students generated two BioStories each that merged scientific information with the narrative storylines in the project. The study was conducted in two phases. In the exploratory phase, a qualitative case study of a sixth‐grade class involving classroom observations and interviews informed the design of the second, confirmatory phase of the study, which was conducted at a different school. This phase involved a mixed methods approach featuring a quasi‐experimental design with two classes of Australian middle school students (i.e., sixth grade, 11 years of age, n = 55). The results support the argument that writing the sequence of stories helped the students become more familiar with biosecurity issues, develop a deeper understanding of related biological concepts, and improve their interest in science. On the basis of these findings, teachers should be encouraged to engage their students in the practice of writing about SSI in a way that integrates scientific information into narrative storylines. Extending the practice to older students and exploring additional issues related to writing about SSI are recommended for further research.  相似文献   

2.
In order to understand better the role of affect in learning about socio-scientific issues (SSI), this study investigated Year 12 students’ emotional arousal as they participated in an online writing-to-learn science project about the socio-scientific issue of biosecurity. Students wrote a series of hybridised scientific narratives, or BioStories, that integrate scientific information about biosecurity with narrative storylines, and uploaded these to a dedicated website. Throughout their participation in the project, students recorded their emotional responses to the various activities (N = 50). Four case students were also video recorded during selected science lessons as they researched, composed and uploaded their BioStories for peer review. Analysis of these data, as well as interview data obtained from the case students, revealed that pride, strength, determination, interest and alertness were among the positive emotions most strongly elicited by the project. These emotions reflected students’ interest in learning about a new socio-scientific issue, and their enhanced feelings of self-efficacy in successfully writing hybridised scientific narratives in science. The results of this study suggest that the elicitation of positive emotional responses as students engage in hybridised writing about SSI with strong links to environmental education, such as biosecurity, can be valuable in engaging students in education for sustainability.  相似文献   

3.
Science educators are typically dismayed by the failure of students to use relevant scientific knowledge when reasoning about socioscientific issues. Except for the well-documented association between having more knowledge about a topic and a tendency to use that knowledge, the influences on students’ evaluation of information in socioscientific issues are not well understood. This study presents an initial investigation into the associations between upper elementary students’ attitudes towards science and their evaluation of information about a socioscientific issue. We surveyed the science attitudes of 49 sixth grade students and then asked them to evaluate information about a socioscientific issue (alternative energy use). Positive attitudes were associated with a more scientific approach to evaluating information in the task. When trying to make judgments, students with generally positive attitudes towards science were more likely to attend to scientific information than other sources. Scientific information, nonetheless, served a variety of socially oriented goals in students’ evaluations. These findings warrant further research on the relationship between science attitudes and reasoning about socioscientific issues and support the argument for connecting school science more clearly with everyday concerns.  相似文献   

4.
Preparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non‐normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting students' NOS views, compassion for others, and decision making. However, extant investigations appear to neglect fully engaging students through authentic SSI in several ways. These include: (i) providing SSI instruction through classroom approaches that are divorced from students' lived experiences; (ii) demonstrating a contextual misalignment between SSI and NOS (particularly evident in NOS assessments); and (iii) framing decision making and position taking analogously—with the latter being an unreliable indicator of how people truly act. The significance of the convergent parallel mixed‐methods investigation reported here is how it responds to these shortcomings through exploring how place‐based SSI instruction focused on the contentious environmental issue of wolf reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone Area impacted sixty secondary students' NOS views, compassion toward those impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro‐environmental intent. Moreover, this investigation explores how those perspectives associate with the students' pro‐environmental action of donating to a Yellowstone environmental organization. Results demonstrate that the students' NOS views became significantly more accurate and contextualized, with moderate to large effect, through the place‐based SSI instruction. Through that instruction, the students also exhibited significant gains in their compassion for nature and people impacted by contentious environmental issues and pro‐environmental intent. Further analyses showed that donating students developed and demonstrated significantly more robust and contextualized NOS views, compassion for people and nature impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro‐environmental intent than their nondonating counterparts. Pedagogical implications include how place‐based learning in authentic settings could better prepare students to understand NOS, become socioculturally aware, and engage SSI across a variety of contexts.  相似文献   

5.
This New Zealand‐based article reports on an analysis of data gathered over two years from upper primary school students on their attitudes to writing and writing instruction and their beliefs about their self‐efficacy as developing writers. Responses from 449 students in five diverse schools are included. Through an online survey administered at the beginning and end of each of the two years, students responded to a range of mostly closed questions. Conclusions (including student comments) were made about students' likes, dislikes and preferences as developing writers. Levels of association between their attitudes and gender and between their attitudes and proficiency levels were explored. Conclusions were also made about how student attitudes affect teacher practice.  相似文献   

6.
The purpose of this investigation was to examine, from a cross‐cultural perspective, students' epistemological patterns of reasoning about socioscientific issues (SSI), and to identify potential interactions of cultural and scientific identity. Mediating factors associated with students' argumentation and discourse about SSI, as well as the public's understanding of science, has been identified as an important area of investigation in the field of science education. This mixed‐methods design included over 300 students from Jamaica, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States. Students responded to instruments designed to assess their epistemological conceptualizations and justifications related to distributive justice, allocation of scarce medical resources, and epistemological beliefs over five dimensions related to scientific knowledge. Four iterations of a coding scheme produced over 97% inter‐rater agreement for four independent coders. Results indicate there is a consistent trend toward epistemological congruity across cultures within inductively derived themes of: (1) Fairness; (2) Pragmatism; (3) Emotive Reasoning; (4) Utility; and (5) Theological Issues. Moreover, there were no discernable differences in terms of how students from these countries presented their beliefs on the sub‐categories of each of the five major categories. It appears that students displayed a high degree of congruence with respect to how they frame their reasoning on this SSI as well as their justifications for their epistemological beliefs. There were statistically significant differences regarding the ability to raise scientifically relevant questions among countries. Commonalities as well as distinguishing characteristics in epistemological orientations are compared and contrasted and connections to a model of socioscientific reasoning with implications for research and pedagogy are discussed. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:251–283, 2013  相似文献   

7.
The literature on students' attitudinal constructs in science education asserts that students hold dichotomous attitudes toward science (AS). For instance, studies from the Relevance of Science Education project reveal that students possess negative attitudes in terms of their favourableness toward school science, preference toward scientific careers, and emotional states toward science (negative intrinsic AS), despite their positive perception that science is important for society (positive extrinsic AS). The issue demands in‐depth examination, since not enough science educators have studied the effects of the dichotomous AS on science education. Rather, they have attempted to improve the uncategorised AS for stimulating student achievement in science education. Hence, the aim of this study is to clarify how the dichotomous attitude (intrinsic AS and extrinsic AS) relates to the two educational products in science: interest inventory and conceptual understanding. One hundred and sixteen physics learners in Japan were sampled for fitting the structural equation model in this study. Our final model validated by LISREL suggests that intrinsic AS exclusively stimulate students' interest and conceptual understanding in physics, while extrinsic AS fail to play their expected role. Finally, features of the sampled 10th‐graders and their dichotomous AS are further interpreted with the prevalent concept of the hidden curriculum.  相似文献   

8.
Håvard Skaar 《Literacy》2015,49(2):69-76
In recent years, plagiarism has been on the increase across the Western world. This article identifies Internet access as a contributory cause of this trend and addresses the implications of readily available Internet sources for the teaching and assessment of writing in schools. The basis for the article is a previous study showing a wide incidence of plagiarism in the Internet‐based writing of students in three classes at upper secondary school level in Norway. I relate the students' choices to writing as a cognitive process and as a cultural practice. My basic assumption is that the students' writing is work. It is this work we have in mind when we relate writing to learning and when we assess students' skills on the basis of their written texts. Access to the Internet changes the premises for this work because writing can be replaced by ‘pseudo‐writing’. ‘Pseudo‐writing’ is a work reducing writing practice, which neither excludes nor coincides with what we traditionally associate with plagiarism in schools. The main point in this article is that when students have access to the Internet during essay writing, the result is unavoidably a product of both writing and pseudo‐writing. Internet access thus leads to greater uncertainty about the role writing plays in student learning and makes it more difficult to take written assignments into account in assessing students' school results and effort.  相似文献   

9.
Internet‐based science learning has been advocated by many science educators for more than a decade. This review examines relevant research on this topic. Sixty‐five papers are included in the review. The review consists of the following two major categories: (1) the role of demographics and learners' characteristics in Internet‐based science learning, such as demographic background, prior knowledge, and self‐efficacy; and (2) the learning outcomes derived from Internet‐based science learning, such as attitude, motivation, conceptual understanding, and conceptual change. Some important conclusions are drawn from the review. For example, Internet‐based science learning is equally favorable, or in some cases more so, to learning for female students compared to male students. The learner's control is essential for enhancing students' attitudes and motivation toward learning in Internet‐based science learning environments. Nevertheless, appropriate guidance from teachers, moderators, or the Internet‐based learning environment itself is still quite crucial in Internet‐based science learning. Recommendations for future research related to the effects of Internet‐based science learning on students' metacognitive reflections, epistemological development, and worldviews are suggested.  相似文献   

10.
Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine (a) college students' attitudes and complexity of thinking about the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and (b) the effects of environment-based coursework on students' attitudes and thinking. Using self-report questionnaires in a pretest-posttest design, the authors examined attitudes in terms of their direction, extremity, ambivalence, and importance. Complexity of thinking was measured as integrative complexity. Results suggested that college students (N = 205) who had moderate and ambivalent attitudes toward the ESA wrote significantly more integratively complex essays about the issue than did students who had unambivalent attitudes. Students' integratively complex thinking was not related to the direction of their attitudes toward the ESA or its personal importance to them. Students who were enrolled in an environment-based, university-wide writing course showed a significantly greater increase in integratively complex thinking about the ESA than did students enrolled in a nonenvironment-based, university-wide writing course.  相似文献   

11.
Contextualizing science instruction involves utilizing students' prior knowledge and everyday experiences as a catalyst for understanding challenging science concepts. This study of two middle school science classrooms examined how students utilized the contextualizing aspects of project‐based instruction and its relationship to their science learning. Observations of focus students' participation during instruction were described in terms of a contextualizing score for their use of the project features to support their learning. Pre/posttests were administered and students' final artifacts were collected and evaluated. The results of these assessments were compared with students' contextualizing scores, demonstrating a strong positive correlation between them. These findings provide evidence to support claims of contextualizing instruction as a means to facilitate student learning, and point toward future consideration of this instructional method in broader research studies and the design of science learning environments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 79–100, 2008  相似文献   

12.
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13.
Assessing the credibility of evidence in complex, socio‐scientific problems is of paramount importance. However, there is little discussion in the science education literature on this topic and on how students can be supported in developing such skills. In this article, we describe an instructional design framework, which we call the Credibility Assessment Framework, to scaffold high school students' collaborative construction of evidence‐based decisions and their assessment of the credibility of evidence. The framework was employed for the design of a web‐based reflective inquiry environment on a socio‐scientific issue, and was enacted with 11th grade students. The article describes the components of the Credibility Assessment Framework and provides the details and results of an empirical study illustrating this framework in practice. The results are presented in the form of a case study of how 11th grade students investigated and evaluated scientific data relating to the cultivation of genetically modified plants. Multiple kinds of data were collected, including pre‐ and post‐tests of students' conceptual understanding and their skills in assessing the credibility of evidence, and videotapes of students' collaborative inquiry sessions. The analysis of the pre‐ and post‐tests on students' conceptual understanding of Biotechnology and their skills in assessing the credibility of evidence revealed statistically significant learning gains. Students' work in task‐related artifacts and the analysis of two groups' videotaped discussions showed that students became sensitive to credibility criteria, questioned the sources of data and correctly identified sources of low, moderate, and high credibility. Implications for designers and educators regarding the application of this framework are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 711–744, 2011  相似文献   

14.
Concerns about social work students' writing are well documented, but the cost of specialized writing programs leaves budget-stressed programs confronting a problem they may feel they have few means to address. However, a valuable resource is already available: faculty expertise in social work writing. The challenge is helping faculty realize their knowledge is not transparent to students; it must be taught, intentionally and explicitly, in undergraduate social work classrooms. Engaging faculty in a process of articulating their expectations will help them elicit more effective student writing and change their attitudes toward student writing from frustrated to excited and optimistic.  相似文献   

15.
Undergraduate students' experience of assessment in universities is usually of summative assessment which provides only limited information to help students improve their performance. By contrast, formative assessment is informative and forward-looking, possessing the leverage to inform students of their day-to-day progress and inform teachers of how to better tailor their instruction to students' immediate learning needs. Despite these potentials, studies carried out on the use of formative assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts are somehow rare. The current study reports on incorporating formative assessment in an L2 writing course in Iran. The analysis of data from pre- and post-study writing tasks, pre- and post-study questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews revealed that first-year undergraduate students were offered opportunities to improve various aspects of their writing and to develop positive attitudes toward writing as well as formative assessment. However, the students reported several challenges that could have implications for the further implementation of formative assessment in similar contexts.  相似文献   

16.
We present an analysis of students' reflective writing (diaries) of two cohorts of Grade 8 students, one undergoing inquiry and the other traditional science teaching. Students' writing included a summary of what students had learned in class on that day and their opinions and feelings about the class. The entries were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. This analysis of students' first-person accounts of their learning experience and their notes taken during class was useful in two ways. First, it brought out a spectrum of differences in outcomes of these two teaching modes—conceptual, affective and epistemic. Second, this analysis brought out the significance and meaning of the learning experience for students in their own words, thus adding another dimension to researchers' characterisation of the two teaching methods.  相似文献   

17.
A study of students' identities as writers was carried out in the classroom of a New Zealand primary teacher who had been formally identified by a national body of teachers as having excellent practice in supporting literacy acquisition. The researchers, Professor Janice Wearmouth, from the University of Bedfordshire, Mere Berryman, from the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and Lisa Whittle, from the Department of Conservation, Wellington, New Zealand, aimed to compare high and low literacy achievers' identities as writers within the context of this teacher's pedagogy and the learning environment of her classroom. The researchers concluded that all students, both high and low achievers, were developing very positive writing identities in a context where the teacher's method of supporting her students' writing was very well planned through a process‐writing approach. This teacher had a very high degree of subject and pedagogical content knowledge and an acute awareness of her students' literacy learning needs. Her approach had an immediacy of responsiveness in relation to every student's learning and, above all, had recognition of the overwhelming importance of positive relationships in the classroom, teacher to student and peer to peer.  相似文献   

18.
Policy documents in science education suggest that even at the earliest years of formal schooling, students are capable of constructing scientific explanations about focal content. Nonetheless, few research studies provide insights into how to effectively provide scaffolds appropriate for late elementary‐age students' fruitful creation of scientific explanations. This article describes two research studies to address the question, what makes explanation construction difficult for elementary students? The studies were conducted in urban fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms where students were learning science through curricular units that contained 8 weeks of scaffold‐rich activities focused on explanation construction. The first study focused on the kind and amount of information scaffold‐rich assessments provided about young students' abilities to construct explanations under a range of scaffold conditions. Results demonstrated that fifth and sixth grade tests provided strong information about a range of students' abilities to construct explanations under a range of supported conditions. On balance, the fourth grade test did not provide as much information, nor was this test curricular‐sensitive. The second study provided information on pre–post test achievement relative to the amount of curricular intervention utilized over the 8‐week time period with each cohort. Results demonstrated that when taking the amount of the intervention into account, there were strong learning gains in all three grade‐level cohorts. In conjunction with the pre–post study, a type‐of‐error analysis was conducted to better understand the nature of errors among younger students. This analysis revealed that our youngest students generated the most incomplete responses and struggled in particular ways with generating valid evidence. Conclusions emphasize the synergistic value of research studies on scaffold‐rich assessments, curricular scaffolds, and teacher guidance toward a more complete understanding of how to support young students' explanation construction. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 141–165, 2012  相似文献   

19.
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  相似文献   

20.
The article reports on a small‐scale short story writing project. It details the development of the project and shares the emerging findings. The aim of the project was to enhance the quality of students' writing while developing teachers' practice in the teaching of short story writing. The project team comprised the author and four secondary teachers of English. The approach to story writing outlined here was influenced by the example of gaming, where players immerse themselves in a secondary world, confront situations which demand problem‐solving skills, progress through a number of stages, and find satisfaction in completing the game. The project explored the link between talking and thinking and the value given to putting forward tentative ideas, raising questions and solving problems in a collective manner, in a whole‐class teaching situation. The teachers used guided classroom talk to explore each stage in the composition of a story. They challenged students into better ways of thinking or more elaborate forms of explanation. The teachers asked ‘what if’ questions to open up possibilities for the young writers. The teachers also had to judge when best to seize the moment and move the students towards writing. A key issue for the project was to explore the extent to which the structured approach helped to liberate the imagination of the students and improve the quality of their writing.  相似文献   

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