Chapter 2 Draft
4-Phase EMPNOS
Erin E. Peters
Conceptual
Framework
Defining the
Nature of Science.
The nature of science has been defined by Lederman (1992) as the values and beliefs inherent to the development of scientific knowledge. In the past, there was not a consensus on what elements of the nature of science were important to teach, but in the past ten years researchers have converged on aspects of the nature of science, and more recently there has been an agreement on the elements of the nature of science (McComas et al., 1998). The literature converges on seven aspects of the nature of science that defines science as a discipline: a) scientific knowledge is durable, yet tentative, b) empirical evidence is used to support ideas in science, c) social and historical factors play a role in the construction of scientific knowledge, d) laws and theories play a central role in developing scientific knowledge, yet they have different functions, e) accurate record keeping, peer review and replication of experiments help to validate scientific ideas, f) science is a creative endeavor, and g) science and technology are not the same, but they impact each other (McComas, 2004). The majority of the educational research dealing with the nature of science is in agreement with the aspects, but disagrees with what constitutes knowledge of the nature of science Some researchers envision student knowledge of the nature of science as explicit description of the aspects, while others judge student knowledge to be more implicit in their reasoning (Bybee, 2004; Deboer, 2004). Evidence of these aspects of the nature of science as the foundation for how science operates as a discipline can be found in science education research journals, books about the philosophy and epistemology of science, and practitioner handbooks.
Preservice Teachers’ Concepts of
the Nature of Science.
The majority of the recent research in the nature of science lies in examining teacher conceptions regarding the nature of science and how this translates to students through inquiry activities. This research attempts to provide guidance to further the development of successful teacher training programs designed to move the scientific education community to more of an understanding of science as both factual knowledge and how the factual knowledge is built and away from an understanding of science as solely a body of factual knowledge.
Much
of the focus of research projects is on pre-service teachers, and many of these
studies have shown to be only moderately, if at all, effective. In a study
focusing on preservice science teachers who had naïve
views of the nature of science, researchers provided an intervention that
consisted of explicit reflective instruction on the nature of science that
showed to be somewhat effective. The main influences on success were
motivation, cognition and worldview of the preservice
teacher (Abd-El-Khalick & Akerson,
2004). In a similar study, elementary preservice
teachers who held naïve views on the nature of science gained substantially in
targeted nature of science concepts except subjective and social aspects of the
nature of science (Akerson & Abd-El-Khalick,
2000). Some success in learning aspects of the nature of science was found in a
study where preservice teachers learned first about
the nature of science and then separately learned how to teach the elements of
the nature of science in their instruction (
Explicit
Instruction of the Nature of Science.
Many of the studies regarding the nature of science reported gains in teacher understanding through interventions involving explicit instruction. In an action research study, an experienced teacher worked with an experienced researcher to identify aspects of the nature of science taught in an inquiry activity. The study found that it was difficult to present cogent and coherent instruction on the nature of science through inquiry and illustrated the teacher’s pivotal role in designing class discussions in what science is and how scientists work (Bianchini & Colburn, 2000). Some success in teaching preservice elementary teachers was found in an intervention that involved explicit instruction in the nature of science. Participants of the study views changed from science as primarily a body of knowledge to a more appropriate blended view of science as a body of knowledge generated through active application of science inquiry (Gess-Newsome, 2002). In a comparative study, researchers taught the same science content to two groups of inservice teachers. The control group received only implicit instruction of the nature of science via the content, and the experimental group received explicit instruction of the nature of science. The control group showed no gains in knowledge of the nature of science, but the experimental group showed significant gains (Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002). Although it is intuitive to think that just by conducting inquiry that students will understand how scientists operate, there is a body of research that demonstrates explicit instruction in the nature of science has been found to be more effective.
Comparing Scientists’
Thinking with Student Thinking.
A purpose of inquiry is to provide opportunities for students to reason scientifically in a way that is authentic to the practice of science. Hogan and Maglienti (2001) examine the criteria that middle school students, non-scientist adults, and scientists use to rate the validity of conclusions drawn by hypothetical students. The 45 volunteer participants in this study were 24 eighth graders, 21 non-scientist adults drawn from one workplace, and 16 science professionals. Students’ achievement level was assessed using a five-level scale and the adults’ achievement level was inferred from their credentials which were documented on a questionnaire. Each participant evaluated 10 conclusions that hypothetical students made based on a given body of evidence. The participants were interviewed, probing for their criteria for determining a valid conclusion. Analyses focused primarily on how participants explained and justified their ratings of each conclusion, from which a coding scheme was developed. The responses of students and non-scientists differed from the responses of scientists because the scientists emphasized criteria of empirical consistency or plausibility in the conclusions. The study found gaps in the processes of reasoning that scientists and non-scientists, including students, used to build new knowledge and that the levels of rigor and specificity were lower with the non-scientists. New ways of teaching students how to think conceptually like scientists are needed for progress to be made in this area (Hogan and Maglienti, 2001).
Translating
Knowledge of the Nature of Science into Classroom Practice.
Even
with modest gains in understanding of the nature of science, teachers still
fail in translating this knowledge into classroom practice. A study of a group
of preservice teachers with adequate knowledge of the
nature of science showed that there was not much instruction involving the
nature of science due to a preoccupation with classroom management and the
mandated curriculum (Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Lederman, 1998). In a study involving preservice
teachers in
Teacher Competence in the Nature of Science.
There is consensus about the more important features of the nature of science, and there is insight to some of the factors that contribute to developing an understanding of the nature of science in teachers. These include experience in science teaching, an active role in translating nature of science knowledge into classroom practice, and explicit instruction of the concepts of the nature of science. Beginning science teachers do not have the experience to develop a set of knowledge and beliefs, which is usually consistent with how teachers act in practice (van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001).
The next step is to examine the research that looks for ways to develop teacher competence in the nature of science. One study examined inservice teacher for factors involved in competence in teaching the nature of science (Bartholomew & Osborne, 2004). They found five critical domains necessary for competence 1) ) teachers knowledge and understanding of the nature of science , 2) teachers conceptions of their own role in the classroom, 3) teachers’ use of discourse, 4) teachers’ conceptions of learning goals, and 5) the nature of classroom activities. Bartholomew and Osborne developed a continuum that helps to identify the amount of competence teachers have in each of the domains. Teachers continue to develop their views of the nature of science through their professional experiences (Nott & Wellington, 1998), so continuous, quality professional development may be key in emergent competence in teacher knowledge of the nature of science. A professional development activity involving the communication of recent developments in the field of biotechnology by scientists to teachers showed that scientists demonstrated a strong commitment to empiricism and experimental design, but not necessarily the nature of science (Glason & Bentley, 2000). Developing a competence in teaching the nature of science is indeed a complicated endeavor when the scientific community itself has difficulty in expressing the nature of science comprehensively.
Self-regulated learning can be used as an instructional tool to relate the aspects of the nature of science to students. Zimmerman (1998) has identified three socially mediated levels that contribute to a person’s self-regulatory strategies: behavior, person, and environment. A person behaves within an environment and reacts (self) based on the consequences of his or her behavior. Several measures of academic success have shown improvement using self-regulated learning strategies (Zimmerman, 1989). Among these measures are strategy use (Pressley, Borkowski & Schneider, 1987; Weinstein & Underwood, 1985), intrinsic motivation (Ryan, Connell & Deci, 1984), the self-system (McCombs, 1986), academic studying (Thomas & Rohwer, 1986), classroom interaction (Rohrkember, 1989; Wang & Peverly, 1986), use of instructional media (Henderson, 1986), metacognitive engagement (Corno & Mandinach, 1983), and self-monitoring learning (Ghatala, 1986; Paris, Cross & Lipson, 1984). One reason that teachers as well as students have difficulty understanding the nature of science is their lack of exposure to the same inherent ways of knowing as a scientist (Hogan, 2000). Self-regulated learning strategies could provide a framework that can scaffold naïve views of the nature of science to more developed views of the nature of science.
Student
Understanding of the Nature of Science.
Investigations into student understanding of the nature of science originate in different realms, but tend to converge on the same finding, that students need to experience cognitive dissonance in order to eliminate archaic conceptions of the nature of science. When students were presented with discrepant events in a long-term setting, their notions of the nature of science began to conform to professional scientists’ understanding of the nature of science (Clough, 1997). Students in another classroom instructed in canonical understanding of science did not show maturity in their understanding of the nature of science, but after incorporating student ideas, including exploration of misconceptions, into instruction the students showed gains in their understanding of the nature of science (Akerson, Flick, & Lederman, 2000). Hogan (2000) suggests that science education researchers can gain a better understanding of how students operationalize the nature of science by dividing up their knowledge into two categories: distal knowledge, how students understand formal scientific knowledge, and proximal knowledge, how students understand their own personal beliefs and commitments in terms of science. Hogan believes that by seeing how the two categories of knowledge intersect, researchers can gain access into how to better develop student understanding of the nature of science.
Information about how students acquire knowledge during discovery learning processes is important to examine due to the social nature of science inquiry and use of the nature of science. Giljers and de Jong (2005) conducted a study investigating the relationship between prior knowledge and students’ collaborative discovery learning processes. In this study, 15 pairs or dyads of students 15 and 16 years old worked on a discovery learning task in the field of physics. The students took pretests probing their generic and definitional knowledge of physics. Students then worked in pairs on a computer assisted unit where they were instructed to talk with their partner. The face-to-face discussions were recorded and analyzed first for utterances, a distinct message from one student to another, then categorized as on-task or off-task. The off-task utterances were not considered in the study, and the on-task communication was categorized as technical, regulative, or transformative. All transformative communication was further analyzed. Interrater reliability was found at 95%. The analysis was discussed in terms of learner hypothesis, contains all propositions, variables and relations the learner can use, and learner domain space, which represents what the learner thinks is true or possibly true. The findings show if both students assume the proposition was true and it was not, it is more difficult to resolve the misconception. If the zone of proximal knowledge was ideal within the dyad, then the pair was more successful in the discovery task, but if high ability students are paired with low ability students, the zone is too distant, and the low ability student does not benefit from the dyad communication. The implication for teachers from this study is that the teacher must observe group processes and intervene when frustrating situations occur.
In another study of student understanding of the nature of science, it was found that students views depended greatly on moral and ethical issues, rather than in newly presented material (Zeidler, Walker, Ackett, & Simmons, 2002). Instead of changing their archaic notions of the nature of science, students tended to hang on to their prior understandings even when presented with conflicting information. Undergraduate science majors were found to change their conceptions of the nature of science during a long-term project that offered many opportunities to discover conflicting information (Ryer, Leach, & Driver, 1999). It appears from the research that students will change their conceptions of the nature of science to more sophisticated through long-term exposure to discrepant information, but before that can be accomplished more information about student processes in learning the nature of science is needed.
Self-regulated learning strategies play an important role in improving students’ understandings through active developmental phases: observation, emulation, self-control, and self-regulation. Observation occurs when a student notes the process of a model throughout a specific task. The emulation phase occurs when a student attempts to try to be like the model and receives support. The self control-phase occurs when the student independently uses the strategy in similar contexts and the self-regulation phase occurs when the student can adapt the use of the strategy across changing conditions (Zimmerman, 2000). It has been shown that student understanding cannot occur passively (Akerson, Flick, & Lederman, 2000; Ryer, Leach, & Driver, 1999), so an intervention is suited to evoke student cognitive change regarding conceptions of the nature of science. The developmental nature of self-regulated learning can aid in progressing naïve student views of the nature of science.
Attempts to
Measure Understanding of the Nature of Science.
Many of the instruments used in the studies regarding the nature of science tend to be objective, pencil and paper assessments which subsequently changed into more descriptive instruments. Toward the end of the 1990’s several researchers make arguments that traditional paper and pencil assessments would not be adequate in fully explaining what needs to be known about teacher and student conceptions of the nature of science (Lederman, Wade, & Bell, 1998). Researchers responded to this argument by conducting interviews along with surveys or by including several open-ended questions on surveys in order to get more descriptive data. Several versions of an instrument originally developed by Lederman, the Views of Nature of Science (VNOS), have been used mostly by the researchers who focus on preservice teachers. Items in this instrument ask teachers to explain scientific activities in their classroom. Researchers then use a rubric to identify when teachers explicitly mention one of the seven identified aspects of the nature of science. Other instruments have been developed to be more descriptive in explaining student achievement in the nature of science such as Scientific Inquiry Capabilities and Scientific Discovery (Zachos, Hick, Doane, & Seargent, 2000). Although the objective, pencil and paper assessments have been altered to include more description of mechanisms, there is still a need for improved assessments regarding both the teacher and student understandings of the nature of science.
Influences of
Epistemology of Science on Instruction.
The way a teacher understands science as a way of knowing greatly influences how the teacher implements instruction and how the students perceive the discipline of science (DeSautels & Larochelle, 2005). Teachers often set up discourse in science as a pattern of question asking, students answer questions and teacher evaluates the student answer (Lemke, 1990). When teachers establish such attitudes toward science, they evoke the idea that science is a collection of final facts and that learning science is the accumulation of these facts. Students learn that academic success depends upon finding the one correct answer that a teacher is expecting. When students are trained to believe that there is only one correct answer, they have difficulty conceptualizing that science is creative and open-ended. Even when the teacher assures students that there are a myriad of ways to answer science questions, they tend to revert back to the didactic model of learning (Peters, 2006). Students who are expected to conceptualize the nature of science need to experience the learning of science as open-ended (Duschl, 1990). Novice teachers tend to depend on the didactic model of teaching until they gain enough experience to teach students a more open way of learning. Meyer (2004) found novice teachers discussed knowledge as if it was a static object, and learning was an accumulation of more bits of information while expert teachers took a more complex view of scientific knowledge. Clearly teachers must actively work against a didactic model of teaching and learning so that knowledge about the nature of science is aligned to the underpinnings of the epistemology in the classroom.
Defining
Metacognition.
Metacognition
can be defined as the executive functions that control actions or the ability
to recognize thinking patterns and evaluate them (Weinert,
1987). There has been some evidence that developing metacognition can enhance
the incorporation of content knowledge in students. Students were better able
to recognize the importance of knowing a few key species in the study of
ecology and to be able to use the language of ecology to help them describe and
discuss ecology because metacognitive cues were incorporated into lessons (Magntorn & Hellden, 2005).
Question-based reflective verbalization, another form of metacognitive
prompting, requires students to describe, explain, and evaluate a finished
design solution to another person and leads to significant improvements in the
solution quality (Wetzstein & Hacker, 2004). Veenman, Kok and Blote (2005) performed a study to establish to what extent
metacognitive skill is associated with intelligence and the impact that prompts
may have on developing metacognitive skills. The participants were 41 students
in the age of 12-13 years from a small middle-class town in the
Teachers who are asked to develop authentic science activities for students often interpret science instruction as a series of often disconnected hands-on lesson which in and of themselves do not guarantee student understanding. Using a process called Metacognitive Learning Cycle emphasizes formal opportunities for teachers and students to talk about their science ideas, forming a feedback loop that informs the development of scientific ideas. One study tested the effectiveness of the Metacognitive Learning Cycle by setting up a control group and an experimental group. There was no significance difference in ecological understanding across two treatment groups, but delayed post test mean scores were higher with Metacognitive Learning Cycle group than with control group (Blank, 2000).
Many
of the studies in the literature regarding metacognition depend on the
spontaneous production of metacognitive skills. Developmental prompts aiding
metacognitive skills will be used in the proposed study, so studies involving
the usefulness of prompts must inform the proposed study.
Self-regulation can help students monitor their learning progress accurately through frequent feedback. Self-regulated learners adopt learning orientation, whereas naïve learners adopt performance orientation (Zimmerman, 1998). By giving students metacognitive tools to check if they are thinking like scientists in an inquiry activity, students may be able to progress from performance orientation to learning orientation. Naïve self-regulators seldom verbalize and are unaware of imagery as a guide and tend to rely on the results from trial-and-error experiences to implement new methods of learning (Costa, Calderia, Gallastegui & Otero, 2000). Skillful self-regulators attribute negatively evaluated outcomes mainly to strategy use, learning method, or insufficient practice, where naïve learners tend to attribute them to ability limitations. Students can be taught positive self-regulations feedback loops by teachers who have access to metacognitive prompts that promote the nature of science.
Literature in metacognition emphasizes the lack of consensus on the mechanisms by which epistemological factors influence student learning (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Hogan, 2000; DeSautels & Larochelle, 2005). More research in developing a thinking strategy or ethic to evaluate the scientific merit of information can change how students develop their scientific way of knowing. Many instructors attempt to teach scientific thinking veiled as the scientific method, which is limiting the way students construct epistemologies regarding the nature of science. A large quantity of research cited earlier illustrates student and teacher tendency to cling to prior ideas regardless of contradiction by new data. Cognitive change can be invoked through deep processes such as metacognition. More research in this field will help to produce more fully informed ideas on how epistemological factors influence student learning.
Nature of Science as a Metacognitive Resource.
The aspects of the nature of science can be useful in helping students to think about their epistemology. Examining the nature of science can supply characteristics that distinguish science from other ways of knowing and explicitly help students scrutinize their rationale in forming ideas (Duschl, Hamilton, & Grandy, 1992). Teachers can utilize these characteristics in their lessons to help students to examine the information they know and think about how student knowledge is scientific. Educational researchers studying metacognition are in agreement that traditional methods of teaching do not allow students to demonstrate all of their knowledge about science (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000).
The field of the nature of science still requires a great deal of exploration. In order to fully understand how people learn such as esoteric subject as the nature of science there needs to be more dialogue between the scientific community and science teachers (Glasson & Bentley, 2000), more understanding of student views of the nature of science (Zeidler et al., 2002), and more understanding of how teachers who have a sophisticated view of the nature of science can incorporate these ideas into classroom practice. Bell and Lederman (2000) studied scientists who had sophisticated but different views on the nature of science to see how they made decisions based on their views. Their research showed no differences in decision making because the scientists made their professional decisions based on personal values, morals/ethics and social concerns.
Literature in metacognition emphasizes the lack of consensus on how epistemological factors influence student learning (Brown, 1987). More research in developing a thinking strategy or ethic to evaluate the scientific merit of information can change how students develop their scientific way of knowing. Many instructors attempt to teach scientific thinking veiled as the scientific method, which is limiting the way students construct epistemologies regarding the nature of science. Cognitive change can be invoked through deep processes such as metacognition (Flavell, 1987). More research in this field will help to produce more fully informed ideas on how epistemological factors influence student learning.
Socially
Constructed Knowledge through Thinking Aloud.
Methods of teaching that allow students to construct knowledge socially are helpful in developing deeper meaning because thought processes of students are exposed and are easier to understand (Gijlers & de Jong, 2005; Hogan 1999). Social construction of knowledge also aids students in recognizing the processes involved in developing scientific arguments such as cultural experience in scientific communities (Hogan, & Maglienti, 2001). Several studies revolve around an exemplary teacher who uses status words to help students evaluate the scientific merit of their knowledge (Beeth, 1998; Beeth & Hewson, 1999). Some of the techniques of the exemplary teacher are not transferable, but the method she uses to develop student ideas with status words is transferable to other teachers. Intelligibility is the primary criteria students use to determine if an idea makes sense to them. If students find the idea to be intelligible, then they are asked to see if the idea is plausible. To be plausible means that the idea correlates to students’ own experiences or experiences they have heard about. The last criteria, the most difficult to determine, is fruitfulness. If the idea can be transferred to different applications, then the idea is fruitful. Some of the research suggests that these strategies are useful for elementary students, but attempts to use them with middle school students were not as successful (Beeth, 1998; Beeth & Hewson, 1999). More sophisticated structures may be needed to elicit social construction of knowledge for middle school students. Four-Phase EMPNOS intervention attempts to develop a more refined, explicit structure to elicit social construction of knowledge through overt metacognitive processes.
Argumentation in
the Construction of Scientific Understanding.
Another camp of researchers sees the chief metacognitive tool as argumentation, as it is central to the presentation of scientific information. Research from this area has shown that written reports of scientific knowledge do not necessarily indicate the totality of student knowledge (Chin, 2000). Students who use written, visual and oral presentations of information are the methods that are most successful in showing the depth of student knowledge, but teachers do not have the pedagogical knowledge to conduct whole class evaluation of arguments that allow students to have a voice in the class (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000), so professional development is necessary for progress in this area. When students are allowed to experience the process of developing and defending arguments, students are better equipped to understanding science as a process of generating knowledge rather than a body of factual information in its final form. One weakness of student argumentation is that younger students have little experience in developing defendable logic structures. Perhaps self-examination of thinking processes could enlighten student into their own epistemologies and become a step toward developing rigorous student argumentation.
Need for Revised
Reform.
Despite
the efforts of many reform movements, science is usually taught in the
classroom as a rigid body of knowledge to be acquired rather than a way of
knowing. Many of the reform efforts ignore teachers’ existing knowledge,
beliefs, and attitudes (van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001).
Science teachers continue to exclusively teach scientific knowledge, ignoring
the inherent ideas that guide the attainment of the knowledge (Duschl, Hamilton & Grandy, 1992).