Can Engaging in Science Practices Promote Deep Understanding of Them?

Abstract

It is now widely accepted, and indeed emphasized in the Next Generation Science Standards, that science education should encompass scientific practice as well as science content. By participating in an intellectual community engaged in the broad range of activities that constitute scientific inquiry, rather than simply mastering isolated science procedures, it is hoped students will come to better understand and appreciate the norms, goals, and values that govern the conduct of science. We put this expectation to empirical test by engaging a secondary school science class in an extended problem‐based activity that included design of investigations, multivariable causal analysis, and argumentation. Compared to students in a nonparticipating control group, in delayed assessments involving new content, participating students showed more advanced investigation, analysis, and argumentation skills, but also superior epistemological understanding regarding science as entailing the evaluation of claims in relation to available evidence.

Fostering high school students’ conceptual understanding and argumentation performance in science through Quality Talk discussions

“…Students who engage in scientific argumentation and model‐based reasoning are more likely to achieve deep conceptual understandings of STEM phenomena (Bathgate, Crowell, Schunn, Cannady, & Dorph, ; Chinn & Clark, ; Chinn, O'Donnell, & Jinks, ; Sampson & Clark, ; Zohar & Nemet, ). They are also more likely to develop a better sense of how science truly works (Kuhn et al., ; NRC, ), including that models of scientific phenomena can, should, and do improve with continued research and analysis (Schwarz et al., ). One of the primary ways to instruct and develop students’ scientific argumentation knowledge and skills is through classroom discourse (McNeill & Krajcik, ,b).…”

“…In response to NGSS, education reformers have argued that scientific argumentation should be more prominent in high‐school STEM education (Manz, ). Argumentation is an important epistemic practice in STEM (Duschl, ; Elby, Macrander, & Hammer, ), as knowing how to engage in STEM knowledge construction, critique, and refinement, both in terms of one's own thinking as well as with others, results in better and more reliable learning and knowledge outcomes (Berland et al., ; Chinn & Reinhart, ; Kuhn, Arvidsson, Lesperance, & Corprew, ). In particular, the scientific practice of argumentation consists of providing a claim that is supported by evidence (e.g., measurements, observations, or previous findings) that is justified with reasoning linking the claim and the evidence used to support it, as well as the processes involved in vetting such claims (Sampson, Grooms, & Walker, ).…”

“…In response to NGSS, education reformers have argued that scientific argumentation should be more prominent in high-school STEM education (Manz, 2014). Argumentation is an important epistemic practice in STEM (Duschl, 2008;Elby, Macrander, & Hammer, 2016), as knowing how to engage in STEM knowledge construction, critique, and refinement, both in terms of one's own thinking as well as with others, results in better and more reliable learning and knowledge outcomes (Berland et al, 2016;Chinn & Reinhart, 2016;Kuhn, Arvidsson, Lesperance, & Corprew, 2017).…”

Process oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL®) marginally effects student achievement measures but substantially increases the odds of passing a course

“…By science practices, we mean the acts of posing questions, generating and testing hypothesis, analyzing and interpreting data, engaging in arguments from evidence, as well as transferrable process skills of collaboration, team leadership, and participating communal activities [5,6]. To this end, there have been various research-based instructional practices that have been widely adopted since the mid-1980s to improve science process skills [3,5].…”

Examples, Illustrations & Evidence: Research Written to Guide and Inform Readers

“…http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.21263/abstract () investigated high school students during their ten‐day exposure to multivariable research and argumentation practices. For those of us who typically advocate for training students to reduce experimental conditions to a single changing variable, this study feels ambitious.…”