Urban middle‐school students' attitudes toward a defined science

Zacharia, Zacharias C.; Barton, Angela Calabrese

doi:10.1002/sce.10110

Cited by 85 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…In this kind of school science, few interactions between science, society, and culture come to light. Instead, knowledge is presented as discovered without problem, and without any influence from values, norms, interests, or specificities of the times or places of its creators (Zacharia and Barton 2004). In other words, school science most often deals with ready-made science (Latour 1987) where consensus has been reached long ago.…”

Section: Aims and Goals Of School Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This conclusion is supported by Feinstein et al (2013) who argued that policy makers of today focus on producing science-ready students. However, if the goal for school science is to be less alienating and bring about Bcompetent outsiders^ (Feinstein 2011), or to create an interest and engagement in more and diverse student groups, a greater balance is needed (Zacharia and Barton 2004). Discussions regarding the goals and aims of school science are far from novel, but have been a topic at least since the beginning of the twentieth century (Rudolph 2005).…”

Section: Aims and Goals Of School Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, a science that could be embraced as functional, meaningful (Allchin 2011(Allchin , 2014, or useful in one form or another in everyday life (Feinstein 2011), as well as being connected to students' experiences and interests (Zacharia and Barton 2004). This kind of science teaching often has a starting point in situations outside science.…”

Section: Aims and Goals Of School Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To teach about sociocultural and subjective aspects of NOS, at least through the issues that these teachers suggest, means to challenge that tradition for better or worse. A common part of the school-science tradition, as described both in the research literature (e.g., Allchin 2003;Feinstein et al 2013;McComas 1998;Rudolph 2005;Ruhrig and Höttecke 2015;Zacharia and Barton 2004) and by the teachers in this study, is the focus on science concepts. These concepts, which are often presented as indisputable facts, constitute an important part of what is referred to as black and white science in the present study.…”

Section: Tensions and Parallel Tracksmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Aims and Goals Of School Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aims and Goals Of School Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aims and Goals Of School Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tensions and Parallel Tracksmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From black and white to shades of grey

2017

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“…As for Pratkanis, Breckler and Greenwald (1988), attitude is individual's evaluation of his/her existing knowledge about some objects (cited in Bilgin & Karaduman, 2005). As for Zacharias and Barton (2004), on the other hand, attitude resists against time and it is related to learnable behaviour, and changes with personal beliefs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation of Science Attitude Scale Developed for Primary School Students into Turkish: Validity and Reliability Studies

Tosun¹,

Genç²

2015

İlköğretim Online

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ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to adapt "Science Attitude Scale-SAS", developed by Wang & Berlin (2010), to Turkish, and investigate the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the scale. The original version of the scale was composed of 30 items gathered under a one factor structure. First, permission was sought from the developers of the scale. Then, the items of the scale were translated into Turkish by researchers. The linguistic equivalence of the scale was examined by referring to the views of English and Turkish language experts. Once the scale took its final form, an English language expert translated the items of the scale from Turkish to English. The results obtained from these stages indicated that the Turkish translation of the scale closely approximated to the original English scale. Herewith, translation and cross-language validity of the scale was completed. The Turkish version of the scale was administered to total of 1013 elementary school students in Bartın and Düzce. The construct validity of the scale was examined by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, the scale consisted of 26 items was gathered under a one factor for elementary school students. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach-Alpha) for the whole scale was calculated as .916 for elementary school students. It is expected that this scale might serve as a beneficial tool for teachers to collect information about elementary school students' attitudes towards science, and as an alternative attitude scale for researchers.

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The mangle of school science practice: Teachers’ negotiations of two nature of science activities at different levels of contextualization

2019

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Nature of science (NOS) has increasingly been emphasized as an important element in science education. This paper engages in the question of how teachers negotiate different approaches to and contexts for NOS teaching. This exploratory study is part of a three-year longitudinal project where six in-service teachers developed and negotiated their NOS-teaching practices. Pickering's (1995) theory of the mangle of practice is used for the analysis of teachers' focus-group discussions. In a mangled practice, school science traditions, policy documents, and students' and teachers' expectations and identities are rubbed against each other. As part of the project teachers planned, implemented, and reflected on two NOS activities at different levels of contextualization. The concepts alignment, resistance, and accommodation are used as an analytical tool to understand the processes of the mangle in relation to teachers' negotiations concerning the two activities during the focus groups. The results of the mangle are presented in relation to a backdrop of three teaching traditions (facts, lab-work, and discussions) that the teachers' claim to depart from. The results show how the alignment and resistance of different components of the mangle lead to various accommodations as regards both the activities and the three traditions. The article concludes by discussing how the teachers' negotiations highlight what becomes possible and what becomes challenging when NOS meets existing traditions, and what this means in respect of possibilities for NOS learning. K E Y W O R D S in-service teachers, levels of contextualization, nature of science, science teaching traditions, the mangle of practice learning of science concepts (

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Urban middle‐school students' attitudes toward a defined science

Cited by 85 publications

References 53 publications

From black and white to shades of grey

From black and white to shades of grey

Adaptation of Science Attitude Scale Developed for Primary School Students into Turkish: Validity and Reliability Studies

The mangle of school science practice: Teachers’ negotiations of two nature of science activities at different levels of contextualization

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