The Story Behind the Science: Bringing Science and Scientists to Life in Post-Secondary Science Education

Clough, Michael P.

doi:10.1007/s11191-010-9310-7

Cited by 126 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…Wang and Marsh 2002;Allchin 2004;Clough 2011) have also argued about the extent to which this decontextualised (illustrative) approach towards HOS, with the sole mention of names and/or anecdotes, should be considered satisfactory in terms of science education and, more importantly, of advocating the introduction of HOS into school science. Thus, contextualised/in-depth historical cases can do more for school science than teaching a Bcomprehensive`greatest hits`survey course^ (Allchin 2004, p. 192), an approach that, according to the findings from this research, has clearly little impact on what students really know about science and scientists.…”

Section: Knowing Scientists Versus Knowing About Scientistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different People in Different Places

Gandolfi

2018

Sci & Educ

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This article presents the results of an exploratory study of students' knowledge about scientists and countries' contributions to science, aiming at answering two research questions: BIn which ways are students aware of the history of scientific development carried out by different people in different places of the world? What can be influencing and shaping their awareness?^Thus, this study aimed at depicting students' knowledge about History of Science (HOS), focusing on what they know about science being done by people and communities from different parts of the world and on how this knowledge is constructed through their engagement with school science. An exploratory research was carried out at two multicultural state secondary schools in London, UK, involving 200 students aged 12-15 (58.5% girls, 41.5% boys) and five science teachers. The method involved an initial exploration of students' knowledge about HOS through an open-ended survey, followed by classroom-based observations and semi-structured interviews with the participants. Results showed a disconnection between remembering scientists and knowing about their work and background, hinting at an emphasis on illustrative and decontextualised approaches towards HOS. Additionally, there was a lack of diversity in these students' answers in terms of gender and ethnicity when talking about scientists and countries in science. These findings were further analysed in relation to their implications for school science and for the fields of HOS, science education and public perception of science.

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Section: Knowing Scientists Versus Knowing About Scientistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different People in Different Places

Gandolfi

2018

Sci & Educ

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“…Thus, if NOS is to become an important part of science teaching-at any stage-there is a need for instructional material. Much work has already been done in this area (e.g., Allchin 2012;Clough 2011;Henke and Höttecke 2015); however, these kinds of materials are not familiar to most teachers. Accordingly, teacher education needs to support teachers with examples of contexts and cases suitable for NOS teaching.…”

Section: Teachers' Rationalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature of Science Progression in School Year 1–9: a Case Study of Teachers’ Suggestions and Rationales

Leden

Hansson

2017

Res Sci Educ

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The inclusion of nature of science (NOS) in science education has for a long time been regarded as crucial. There is, however, a lack of research on appropriate NOS aspects for different educational levels. An even more neglected area of research is that focusing on teachers' perspectives on NOS teaching at different levels. The aim of this article is to examine NOS progression in the light of teachers' suggestions and rationales. In order to obtain teachers' informed perspectives, we chose to involve six teachers (teaching grades 1-9) in a 3-year research project. They took part in focus group discussions about NOS and NOS teaching as well as implemented jointly planned NOS teaching sessions. Data that this article builds on was collected at the end of the project. The teachers' suggestions for NOS progression often relied on adding more NOS issues at every stage, thereby creating the foundations of a broader but not necessarily deeper understanding of NOS. Five rationales, for if/when specific NOS issues are appropriate to introduce, emerged from the analysis of the teacher discussions. Some of these rationales, including practice makes perfect and increasing levels of depth can potentially accommodate room for many NOS issues in the science classroom, while maturity and experience instead has a restricting effect on NOS teaching. Also, choice of context and teaching approaches play an important role in teachers' rationales for whether specific NOS issues should be included or not at different stages. The article discusses the implications for teacher education and professional development.

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“…Furthermore, firsthand experiences of NOS teaching in combination with teaching examples (e.g., from Bsuccess stories^or from the rich source of instructional material c.f. Allchin 2012;Clough 2011;Henke and Höttecke 2015) could constitute the basis of a broader and more solid teaching repertoire.…”

Section: Implications and Concluding Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

From black and white to shades of grey

2017

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Traditional school science has been described as focused on indisputable facts where scientific processes and factors affecting these processes become obscured or left undiscussed. In this article, we report on teachers' perspectives on the teaching of sociocultural and subjective aspects of the nature of science (NOS) as a way to accomplish a more nuanced science teaching in Swedish compulsory school. The teachers (N = 6) took part in a longitudinal study on NOS and NOS teaching that spanned 3 years. The data consists of recorded and transcribed focus group discussions from all 3 years. In the analysis, the transcripts were searched for teachers' suggestions of issues, relevant for teaching in compulsory school, as well as opportunities and challenges connected to the teaching of these issues. The results of the analysis show that (a) the number of suggested issues increased over the years, (b) teachers' ways of contextualizing the issues changed from general and unprecise to more tightly connected to socio-scientific or scientific contexts, and (c) the number of both opportunities and challenges related to NOS teaching increased over the years. The most evident changes occurred from the beginning of year 2 when the focus group discussions became more closely directed towards concrete teaching activities. Tensions between the opportunities and challenges are discussed as well as how these can be met, and made use of, in science teacher education.

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The Story Behind the Science: Bringing Science and Scientists to Life in Post-Secondary Science Education

Cited by 126 publications

References 43 publications

Different People in Different Places

Different People in Different Places

Nature of Science Progression in School Year 1–9: a Case Study of Teachers’ Suggestions and Rationales

From black and white to shades of grey

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