Taking Science to School Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (2007) / Chapter Skim
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5 Generating and Evaluating Scientific Evidence and Explanations
5 Generating and Evaluating Scientific Evidence and Explanations
Pages 129-167
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From page 129... ...
In this chapter, we discuss the various lines of research related to Strand 2 -- generate and evaluate evidence and explanations.1 The ways in which 1Portions of this chapter are based on the commissioned paper by Corinne Zimmerman titled, "The Development of Scientific Reasoning Skills: What Psychologists Contribute to an Understanding of Elementary Science Learning."
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From page 130... ...
Across this same period, the psychological study of science has evolved from a focus on scientific reasoning as a highly developed form of logical thinking that cuts across scientific domains to the study of scientific thinking as the interplay of general reasoning strategies, knowledge of the natural phenomena being studied, and a sense of how scientific evidence and ex planations are generated. Much early research on scientific thinking and inquiry tended to focus primarily either on conceptual development or on the development of reasoning strategies and processes, often using very
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From page 131... ...
For example, some emphasize the design of well-controlled experiments, while others emphasize building and critiquing models of natural phenomena. In addition, some researchers study scientific reasoning in stripped down, laboratory-based tasks, while others examine how children approach complex inquiry tasks in the context of the classroom.
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From page 132... ...
At all ages, prior knowledge of the domain under investigation plays an important role in the formulation of questions and hypotheses (Echevarria, 2003; Klahr, Fay, and Dunbar, 1993; Penner and Klahr, 1996b; Schauble, 1990, 1996; Zimmerman, Raghavan, and Sartoris, 2003)
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From page 133... ...
For fifth graders, the more elaborate instructional support improved their performance compared with a control group that did not receive any support. For eighth graders, both kinds of instructional support led to improved performance.
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. Reminiscent of the results of the earlier study by Kuhn and Phelps, both children and adults display intraindividual variability in strategy usage.
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In a direct exploration of the effect of adopting scientific versus engineering goals, Schauble, Klopfer, and Raghavan (1991) provided fifth and sixth graders with an "engineering context" and a "science context." When the children were working as scientists, their goal was to determine which factors made a difference and which ones did not.
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From page 136... ...
In a study by Trafton and Trickett (2001) , undergraduates solving scientific reasoning problems in a computer environment were more likely to achieve correct performance when using the notebook function (78 per cent)
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From page 137... ...
As such, knowledge of how one's own memory works may represent an important moderating variable in understanding the development of scientific reasoning (Kuhn, 2001)
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From page 138... ...
Evalua tion of covariation evidence is potentially important in regard to scientific thinking because covariation is one potential cue that two events are caus ally related. Deanna Kuhn and her colleagues carried out pioneering work on children's and adults' evaluation of covariation evidence, with a focus on how participants coordinate their prior beliefs about the phenomenon with the data presented to them (see Box 5-1)
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From page 139... ...
. Responses were coded as theory based when they referred to the participant's prior beliefs or theories (e.g., a response that chocolate cake has "sugar and a lot of bad stuff in it" or that "less sugar means your blood pressure doesn't go up")
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From page 140... ...
Instead, Koslowski suggested that using prior knowledge when gathering and evaluating evidence is a valid strategy. She developed a series of experi ments to support her thesis and to explore the ways in which prior knowl edge might play a role in evaluating evidence.
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From page 141... ...
Children tend to focus on making causal inferences during their initial explorations of a causal system. In a study in which children worked to discover the causal structure of a computerized microworld, fifth and sixth graders began by producing confounded experiments and relied on prior knowledge or expectations (Schauble, 1990)
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From page 142... ...
Knowledge change and experience -- gaining a better under standing of the causal system via experimentation -- was associated with the use of valid experimentation and inference strategies. THE ROLE OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE In the previous section we reviewed evidence on developmental differ ences in using scientific strategies.
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From page 143... ...
Beliefs About Causal Mechanism and Plausibility In response to research on evaluation of covariation evidence that used knowledge-lean tasks or even required participants to suppress prior knowledge, Koslowski (1996) argued that it is legitimate and even helpful to consider prior knowledge when gathering and evaluating evidence.
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Although the sixth graders were less likely to gen erate a variety of alternative hypotheses, all age groups proposed appropriate con trastive tests. relation between the illness and having recently cleaned carpets.
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From page 145... ...
When the covariation was implausible, sixth graders were more likely to generate dubious mechanisms to account for the correlation. The role of prior knowledge, especially beliefs about causal mechanism and plausibility, is also evident in hypothesis formation and the design of investigations.
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From page 146... ...
Evaluating Evidence That Contradicts Prior Beliefs Anomalous data or evidence refers to results that do not fit with one's current beliefs. Anomalous data are considered very important by scientists because of their role in theory change, and they have been used by science educators to promote conceptual change.
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From page 147... ...
Others concluded that both weight and shape make a difference. That is, there was an attempt to reconcile the evidence with prior knowledge and expectations by appealing to causal mechanisms, alternate causes, or enabling conditions.
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They were then tested for generalizations, and a retention test followed 9-10 days later. Fifth and sixth graders performed better than did fourth graders.
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Very few of the early studies focusing on the development of experimentation and evidence evaluation skills explicitly addressed issues of instruction and experience. Those that did, however, indicated an important role of experience and instruction in supporting scientific thinking.
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From page 150... ...
Chinn and Malhotra (2002) incorporated different kinds of inter ventions, aimed at promoting conceptual change in response to anomalous experimental evidence.
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From page 151... ...
They were able to design unconfounded experiments, which facilitated valid causal and noncausal inferences, resulting in a change in knowledge about how various multivariable causal systems worked. Significant gains in domain knowledge were evident only for the instruction group.
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From page 152... ...
Science and scientific thinking are not only about logical thinking or conducting carefully controlled ex periments. Instead, building knowledge in science is a complex process of building and testing models and theories, in which knowledge of the natural world and strategies for generating and evaluating evidence are closely in tertwined.
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From page 153... ...
Diversity in representational and mathematical resources both accompanied and produced conceptual change. As children developed and used new mathematical means for characterizing growth, they understood biological change in increasingly dynamic ways.
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From page 154... ...
. It is not feasible in this report to summarize the extensive body of re search in mathematics education, but one point is especially critical for sci ence education: the need to expand elementary school mathematics beyond arithmetic to include space and geometry, measurement, and data/ uncertainty.
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From page 155... ...
. Data Researchers agree that scientific thinking entails the coordination of theory with evidence (Klahr and Dunbar, 1988; Kuhn, Amsel, and O'Loughlin, 1988)
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From page 156... ...
At this point, students sometimes discover that their data require further abstraction. For example, as they categorized features of self portraits drawn by other students, a group of fourth graders realized that it would not be wise to follow their original plan of creating 23 categories of "eye type" for the 25 portraits that they wished to categorize (DiPerna, 2002)
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From page 157... ...
Perhaps the most easily interpretable form of representation widely used in science is scale models. Physical models of this kind are used in science education to make it possible for students to visualize objects or processes that are at a scale that makes their direct perception impossible or, alternatively, that permits them to directly manipulate something that otherwise
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From page 158... ...
Comprehensibility seems to vary with the complexity of what is portrayed, the particular diagrammatic details and features, and the prior knowledge of the user. Diagrams can be difficult to understand for a host of reasons.
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From page 159... ...
In almost all cases, the studies converge to the position that the skills under study develop with age, but also that this development is significantly enhanced by prior knowledge, experience, and instruction. One of the continuing themes evident from studies on the development of scientific thinking is that children are far more competent than first suspected, and likewise that adults are less so.
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From page 160... ...
Characteristics of prior knowledge, such as its type, strength, and relevance, are potential determinants of how new evidence is evaluated and whether anomalies are noticed. Knowledge change occurs as a result of the encounter.
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From page 161... ...
. Anomalies as a catalyst for middle school students' knowledge construction and scientific reasoning during science inquiry.
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From page 162... ...
. Dual search space during scientific reasoning.
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From page 163... ...
. Is developing scientific thinking all about learning to control variables?
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From page 164... ...
. Scientific thinking and science literacy.
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From page 165... ...
. Belief revision in children: The role of prior knowledge and strategies for generating evidence.
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From page 166... ...
. Causal models and experimentation strategies in scientific reasoning.
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From page 167... ...
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(9)
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