Students’ Scientific Evaluations of Water Resources (original) (raw)
Related papers
Students\u27 Scientific Evaluations of Water Resources
2020
Socially-relevant and controversial topics, such as water issues, are subject to differences in the explanations that scientists and the public (herein, students) find plausible. Students need to be more evaluative of the validity of explanations (e.g., explanatory models) based on evidence when addressing such topics. We compared two activities where students weighed connections between lines of evidence and explanations. In one activity, students were given four evidence statements and two models (one scientific and one non-scientific alternative); in the other, students chose four out of eight evidence statements and three models (two scientific and one non-scientific). Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that both activities engaged students\u27 evaluations and differentially shifted students\u27 plausibility judgments and knowledge. A structural equation model suggested that students\u27 evaluation may influence post-instructional plausibility and knowledge; w...
Science Education, 2017
Evaluation is an important aspect of science and is receiving increasing attention in science education. The present study investigated (1) changes to plausibility judgments and knowledge as a result of a series of instructional scaffolds, called model-evidence link activities, that facilitated evaluation of scientific and alternative models in four different Earth science topics (climate change, fracking and earthquakes, wetlands and land use, and the formation of Earth's Moon) and (2) relations between evaluation, plausibility reappraisal, and knowledge. Repeated measure multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) showed that participants' plausibility judgments shifted toward scientifically accepted explanations and increased their knowledge about relevant Earth science topics after participating in the activities. Structural equation modeling revealed that 10% of the postinstructional knowledge scores were related to participants' evaluations, above and beyond background knowledge, which accounted for 26% of the variance. The activities used in this study may help students develop their critical thinking skills by facilitating evaluation of the validity of explanations based on evidence, a scientific practice that is key to understanding both scientific content and science as a process. However, results from the study were modest and suggest that additional research, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, may be warranted.
International Journal of Science Education, 2004
This study examined 10th-grade students' use of theory and evidence in evaluating a socio-scientific issue: the use of underground water, after students had received a Science, Technology and Society-oriented instruction. Forty-five male and 45 female students from two intact, single-sex, classes participated in this study. A flow-map method was used to assess the participants' conceptual knowledge. The reasoning mode was assessed using a questionnaire with open-ended questions. Results showed that, although some weak to moderate associations were found between conceptual organization in memory and reasoning modes, the students' ability to incorporate theory and evidence was in general inadequate. It was also found that students' reasoning modes were consistent with their epistemological perspectives. Moreover, male and female students appear to have different reasoning approaches. Rationale By nature, science is both a process of justifying knowledge (what we know) and of discovering knowledge (how we know) (Duschl 1990). However, traditional science classroom activities mainly focus on the part of what we know. In the science education community there is a growing consensus that we need to introduce learners to the another important facet of science; that is, how we create new knowledge. In other words, students should be better educated in the use of certain
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2018
Critical evaluation underpins the practices of science. In a three-year classroom-based research project, we developed and tested instructional scaffolds for Earth science content in which students evaluate lines of evidence with respect to alternative explanations of scientific phenomena (climate change, fracking and earthquakes, wetlands and land use, and formation of Earth's Moon). The present paper documents a quasi-experimental study where high school Earth science students completed these instructional scaffolds, including an explanation task scored for evaluative levels (erroneous, descriptive, relational, and critical), along with measures of plausibility reappraisal and knowledge. Repeated measures analyses of variance reveal significant increases in plausibility and knowledge scores for students completing instructional scaffolds that promoted students' evaluations about the connections between lines of evidence and two alternative explanations, whereas evaluations about connections between lines of evidence and only one alternative show no change in scores. A structural equation model suggests that students' evaluation may influence post instructional plausibility and knowledge. The results of this study demonstrate that students' active evaluation of scientific alternatives and explicit reappraisal of plausibility judgments can support deeper learning of Earth science content.
A framework for scaffolding students' assessment of the credibility of evidence
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2011
Assessing the credibility of evidence in complex, socio-scientific problems is of paramount importance. However, there is little discussion in the science education literature on this topic and on how students can be supported in developing such skills. In this article, we describe an instructional design framework, which we call the Credibility Assessment Framework, to scaffold high school students' collaborative construction of evidence-based decisions and their assessment of the credibility of evidence. The framework was employed for the design of a web-based reflective inquiry environment on a socioscientific issue, and was enacted with 11th grade students. The article describes the components of the Credibility Assessment Framework and provides the details and results of an empirical study illustrating this framework in practice. The results are presented in the form of a case study of how 11th grade students investigated and evaluated scientific data relating to the cultivation of genetically modified plants. Multiple kinds of data were collected, including pre-and post-tests of students' conceptual understanding and their skills in assessing the credibility of evidence, and videotapes of students' collaborative inquiry sessions. The analysis of the pre-and post-tests on students' conceptual understanding of Biotechnology and their skills in assessing the credibility of evidence revealed statistically significant learning gains. Students' work in task-related artifacts and the analysis of two groups' videotaped discussions showed that students became sensitive to credibility criteria, questioned the sources of data and correctly identified sources of low, moderate, and high credibility. Implications for designers and educators regarding the application of this framework are discussed. ß 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach
Science & Education, 2019
In addition to considering sociocultural, political, economic, and ethical factors (to name a few), effectively engaging socioscientific issues (SSI) requires that students understand and apply scientific explanations and the nature of science (NOS). Promoting such understandings can be achieved through immersing students in authentic real-world contexts where the SSI impacts occur and teaching those students about how scientists comprehend, research, and debate those SSI. This triangulated mixed-methods investigation explored how 60 secondary students' trophic cascade explanations changed through their experiencing place-based SSI instruction focused on the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, including scientists' work and debates regarding that issue. Furthermore, this investigation determined the association between the students' post place-based SSI instruction trophic cascade explanations and NOS views. Findings from this investigation demonstrate that through the place-based SSI instruction students' trophic cascade explanations became significantly more accurate and complex and included more ecological causal mechanisms. Also, significant and moderate to moderately large correlations were found between the accuracy and contextualization of students' post place-based SSI instruction NOS views and the complexity of their trophic cascade explanations. Empirical substantiation of the association between the complexity of students' scientific explanations and their NOS views responds to an understudied area in the science education research. It also encourages the consideration of several implications, drawn from this investigation's findings and others' prior work, which include the need for NOS to be forefront alongside and in connection with science content in curricular standards and through instruction focused on relevant and authentic place-based SSI.
2003
This study was designed to determine how students' engagement in a learning and debate activity on a current scientific controversy influences their understanding of the nature of science and, in turn, informs their decision-making on the issue. Two high school science classrooms, totaling 38 students from 9th through 12th grade, participated in the Internet-based unit on the topic of genetically modified foods. The unit, including introductory discussions on the nature of science, a video on the controversy of genetically modified foods, a series of online activities that presented multiple perspectives of the controversy, and follow-up interviews, took place over seven consecutive 1.5 hour period blocks. The study utilized qualitative procedures to analyze students' views on the nature of science as expressed through their answers to online and interview questions and a final classroom debate. Each student conversational turn in the debate was analyzed for references to supporting evidence and instances of moral and fallacious reasoning. While students did not make explicit reference to conceptual understandings of the nature of science in the classroom debate, the issue-based activity was successful as a pedagogical approach to facilitate and reveal students' conceptions of science. The students' answers to online questions reflected conceptions of the tentative, creative, subjective, and social aspects of science. Their high level of engagement throughout the unit supported the students' positive affective verbal response to the Internet-based, scaffolded learning environment and subject matter content. Findings from the analysis of students' mastery of the subject matter of genetic engineering and their reference to subject matter knowledge and evidence in the classroom debate suggest that NOS centered discussions should coincide with in-depth learning activities on the subject matter content of the controversy. Taxonomic categories and samples of thought are presented and discussed, and implications for science education are addressed. Research Question 1: What features of a web-based learning environment are effective for engaging students in learning and debate activities on the nature of science and current socioscientific controversies? There were three sub-questions guiding this portion of the data analysis, focusing on instructional design attributes, subject matter content, and the pedagogical structure of the debate activity. They are as follows: Research Question 1A: Were the instructional design attributes (e.g. scaffolding tools, navigation, and user interface) effective in scaffolding students through the learning treatment? Research Question IB: How did students' understanding of the subject matter of genetically modified foods develop or change through the course of the learning treatment? Research Question 1C: How did students utilize evidence claims or GMF subject matter knowledge (SMK) in formulating and presenting their arguments for the classroom debate? Research Question 2: How does students' engagement in a web-based learning environment on a current socioscientific controversy elicit, reveal, and develop their conceptual understanding of the nature of science? Research Question 3: What is the nature of the relationships that exist, if any, between students' understanding of the nature of science and their reasoning used to make decisions on a current socioscientific controversy? Research Design This exploratory case study, in its entirety, occurred in six phases as subsequently described.
Evaluating Science Arguments: Evidence, Uncertainty, and Argument Strength
Journal of Experimental Psychology-applied, 2009
Public debates about socioscientific issues are increasingly prevalent, but the public response to messages about, for example, climate change, does not always seem to match the seriousness of the problem identified by scientists. Is there anything unique about appeals based on scientific evidence-do people evaluate science and nonscience arguments differently? In an attempt to apply a systematic framework to people's evaluation of science arguments, the authors draw on the Bayesian approach to informal argumentation. The Bayesian approach permits questions about how people evaluate science arguments to be posed and comparisons to be made between the evaluation of science and nonscience arguments. In an experiment involving three separate argument evaluation tasks, the authors investigated whether people's evaluations of science and nonscience arguments differed in any meaningful way. Although some differences were observed in the relative strength of science and nonscience arguments, the evaluation of science arguments was determined by the same factors as nonscience arguments. Our results suggest that science communicators wishing to construct a successful appeal can make use of the Bayesian framework to distinguish strong and weak arguments.
Science Education, 2008
Theoretical and empirical research on argument and argumentation in science education has intensified over the last two decades. The term "argument" in this review refers to the artifacts that a student or a group of students create when asked to articulate and justify claims or explanations whereas the term "argumentation" refers to the process of constructing these artifacts. The intent of this review is to provide an overview of several analytic frameworks that science educators use to assess and characterize the nature of or quality of scientific arguments in terms of three focal issues: structure, justification, and content. To highlight the foci, affordances, and constraints of these different analytic methods, the review of each framework includes an analysis of a sample argument. The review concludes with a synthesis of the three focal issues and outlines several recommendations for future work. Ultimately, this examination and synthesis of these frameworks in terms of how each conceptualizes argument structure, justification, and content is intended An earlier version of this article, entitled "Assessment of Argument in Science Education: A Critical