Constructing Scientific Explanations: a System of Analysis for Students’ Explanations (original) (raw)
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2020
Issues regarding scientific explanation have been of interest to philosophers from Pre-Socratic times. The notion of scientific explanation is of interest not only to philosophers, but also to science educators as is clearly evident in the emphasis given to K-12 students' construction of explanations in current national science education reform efforts-the Next Generation Science Standards NGSS (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Nonetheless, there is a dearth of research on conceptualizing explanation in science education. Scientific explanation seems to be ill-defined (or left undefined) among researchers, science teachers and, in turn, students (Braaten & Windschitl, 2010, p. 639). Guided by philosophical models of and approaches to explanation, this study proposed a framework-the Nature of Scientific Explanation (NOSE)-for assessing the type, nature and quality of scientific explanations. Furthermore, to establish the validity and usefulness of the NOSE framework, the study aimed to (a) examine college freshman science students', secondary science teachers', and practicing scientists' explanations, (b) elucidate their perceptions of explanations and how they compare to the formal analytical NOSE framework and (c) characterize the nature of the criteria that participant students, teachers, and scientists deploy when assessing the "validity" of explanations. The following research questions guided the study: (1) How do college freshmen science students', secondary science teachers' and practicing scientists' explanations fare when assessed using the NOSE framework? In other words, what is the nature (structural elements) and quality of participants' scientific explanations when analyzed using the NOSE framework? (2) How do college freshmen science students', secondary science teachers' and practicing scientists' explanations of scientific phenomena compare and contrast when analyzed using the NOSE framework? (3) What criteria do college ii iii freshmen science students, secondary science teachers, and practicing scientists use in judging the quality of scientific explanations? How are these criteria consistent among and/or different across the three groups? (4) To what extent are freshmen science students', secondary science teachers' and practicing scientists' views of the quality of scientific explanations aligned with those of NOSE framework? The study was exploratory in nature. In-depth, semi structured interviews served as the main instrument of data collection. In two separate interviews, participants first constructed explanations of everyday scientific phenomena and then provided feedback on the explanations constructed by other participants. Participants comprised three groups from a large, Midwestern University and neighboring communities: freshman college students, secondary science teachers, and practicing scientists. Each group comprised 10 participants (50% male, 50% female). The study was conducted in two phases. First, during semi-structured individual interviews all participants generated explanations of various scientific phenomena. Interview transcripts were used to generate an explanation map for each participant following procedures of the NOSE framework developed in this study. During the second phase of the study, participants in each group assessed and provided feedback on the explanations generated during the first phase by other participants. The assignment of explanations to be examined was randomized and ensured that each participant assessed all four scenarios. This examination took place in the context of a second, semi-structured interview. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim for analysis. Data analysis comprised three phases. The first involved (a) the construction of explanation maps from participant transcripts; (b) analysis of maps and corresponding transcripts for emerging participant criteria; (c) using the NOSE framework to generate a profile of iv participants' types and quality of explanations articulated during the first interview; (d) the explanation maps for each group of participants (students, science teachers, and scientists) were examined to generate a full descriptive account or profile of these maps. This analysis resulted in three profiles, one each for the group of participants; and (e) finally the profiles were compared and contrasted to make assertions regarding ways in which students, teachers, and scientists' explanations were similar or different from NOSE framework analysis. The second phase focused on analyzing transcripts generated during the second interview to characterize participants' perceptions of the nature of explanations, and derive the criteria deployed by members of the three groups to judge the "validity" or "goodness" of explanations. This resulted in individual profiles as to perceptions of the nature of explanations and criteria used to judge explanations. Profiles within each group of participants were analyzed for general patterns to generate a common set of criteria that each group used in their assessment, when applicable. These common sets were then compared and contrasted across the three groups. The third phase of data analysis focused on comparing and contrasting the sets of criteria derived from the second phase with those NOSE framework. Analysis in this third phase was more conceptual in nature and focused on how the three groups of participants fared in terms of explanation when their explanations were analyzed using NOSE framework. In general, major findings showed that, when analyzed using NOSE framework, participant scientists did significantly "better" than teachers and students. What is more, most participants across all three groups judged as "best" or "complete" or "good" the explanations made by participant scientists, even though group memberships of the explainers were held anonymous. In addition, scientists had more adequate scientific explanations, from a NOSE perspective, in the sense of providing more relevant and accurate structural elements. Analysis v showed that participant explanation maps demonstrated similarities and differences across the three groups. Mainly, scientists' explanations included more pieces of knowledge and lawlike statements, which were relevant and accurate and/or based on prior content knowledge compared to students' and teachers' explanations. Participants' perceptions of explanations differed significantly. Students tended to think of explanation as a "true" answer to a why-question based on observations. However, teachers and scientists tended to perceive explanation as a testable and verifiable tool that provides understanding. More important were the criteria that participants used to assess explanations. Context-dependence and learner-dependence turned out to be two of the most important aspects of explanations considered by participants. In conclusion, the present study highlights the need articulated by many researchers in science education to understand additional aspects specific to scientific explanation. The study highlighted the importance of not only the structural elements that make up a scientific explanation, but also the connectedness of these elements within the context of teaching and learning. The present findings provide an initial framework for judging the validity of students' and science teachers' scientific explanations. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to my dissertation director, Fouad-Abd-El-Khalick for his support and mentorship. His continued guidance and encouragement during the past six years were invaluable. I also want to thank deeply, my advisor, David Brown, for always challenging me to go further and deeper. I will forever be thankful to my former advisor and current committee member, professor Saouma BouJaoude. My success would not have been possible without Dr. Saouma's support and nurturing. I would also like to extend my thanks and appreciation to my committee members, professors Gloriana González Rivera, and Barbara Hug for their valuable guidance and advice. Many thanks to all the scientists, teachers and students who participated in my study. Special thanks go to Beth Niswander for always being there for me, and for Saad Shehab for his aid in helping me with the reliability of the results. I want to thank my loving family: my mother, Siham, my brothers, Hassan and Ihab, and my sister, Soha, for their love and support during all the difficult and sad times we passed through. This whole journey would not have been possible without their enormous support and understanding throughout my stay in the United States. To my parents-in-law, April and Henry, I want to thank you for your endless support and dedication. Finally, and above all, I cannot begin to express my unfailing gratitude and love to my husband, Kent, who has supported me throughout this process and has constantly encouraged me when the tasks seemed arduous and insurmountable. vii Dedicated to the loving memory of my father,
Conceptual and epistemic aspects of students' scientific explanations
Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2003
This article explores how students' epistemological ideas about the nature of science interact with their conceptual understanding of a particular domain, as reflected in written explanations for an event of natural selection constructed by groups of high school students through a technology-supported curriculum about evolution. Analyses intended to disentangle conceptual and epistemic aspects of explanation reveal that groups sought plausible causal accounts of observed data, and were sensitive to the need for causal coherence, while articulating explanations consistent with the theory of natural selection. Groups often failed to explicitly cite data to support key claims, however, both because of difficulty in interpreting data and because they did not seem to see explicit evidence as crucial to an explanation. These findings reveal that students have productive epistemic resources to bring to bear during inquiry, but highlight the need for an epistemic discourse around student-generated artifacts to deepen both the conceptual and epistemological understanding students may develop through inquiry.
Towards a Philosophically Guided Schema for Studying Scientific Explanation in Science Education
Science & Education, 2018
Stemming from the realization of the importance of the role of explanation in the science classroom, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013) call for appropriately supporting students to learn science, argue from evidence, and provide explanations. Despite the ongoing emphasis on explanations in the science classroom, there seems to be no well-articulated framework that supports students in constructing adequate scientific explanations, or that helps teachers assess student explanations. Our motivation for this article is twofold: First, we think that the ways in which researchers in science education have studied scientific explanation are, at best, leaves much to be desired and, at worst, simply incomplete. Second, we believe that research about the teaching and learning of explanation in science classrooms must be guided by explicit models or frameworks that specify elements involved in constructing explanations particularly applicable to science. More importantly, we think that the development of such models or guidelines should be based on theoretical and philosophical foundations. In order to develop these frameworks or guidelines, we first outline and clarify models of scientific explanation developed by philosophers of science over the last few decades. In the second section of this article, we present a more recent philosophical work on scientific explanation, the pragmatic approach to studying scientific explanations. This approach suggests a toolbox for analyzing scientists' scientific explanations, which provides a useful instrument to science education. In Section 3, we discuss the ways by which the previous two sections are useful in developing a K-12 scientific explanation schema. Implications for future research on students' explanations are discussed.
Explanation and the Nature of Scientific Knowledge
Explaining phenomena is a primary goal of science. Consequently, it is unsurprising that gaining a proper understanding of the nature of explanation is an important goal of science education. In order to properly understand explanation, however, it is not enough to simply consider theories of the nature of explanation. Properly understanding explanation requires grasping the relation between explanation and understanding, as well as how explanations can lead to scientific knowledge. This article examines the nature of explanation, its relation to understanding, and how explanations are used to generate scientific knowledge via inferences to the best explanation. Studying these features and applications of explanation not only provides insight into a concept that is important for science education in its own right, but it also sheds light on an aspect of recent debates concerning the so-called consensus view of the nature of science (NOS). Once the relation between explanation, understanding, and knowledge is clear, it becomes apparent that science is unified in important ways. Seeing this unification provides some support for thinking that there are general features of NOS of the sort proposed by the consensus view, and that teaching about these general features of NOS should be a goal of science education.
The PRO instructional strategy in the construction of scientific explanations
This article presents an instructional strategy called PRO (Premise-Reasoning-Outcome) designed to support students in the construction of scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, the PRO strategy involves identifying three components of a scientific explanation: (i) premise – an accepted principle or fact that provide the basis of the explanation, (ii) reasoning – logical sequences that follow from the premise and (iii) outcome – the phenomenon to be explained. Based on a year of study in four physics and chemistry classrooms, the article reports on how the teachers integrated the PRO strategy in their science teaching.
Verbal explanations given by science teachers: Their nature and implications
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 1992
The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of explanations used by science teachers in junior high school classrooms. Studies on explanation in education, philosophy of science, and everyday discourse were consulted. Twenty public school teachers participated in the study. The analysis was based on observations of 40 class periods during which the classroom discourse was audiotaped and later transcribed. Using the constant comparative method in analyzing the transcripts, 10 types of explanations were generated. These explanations were labeled analogical, anthropomorphic, functional, genetic, mechanical, metaphysical, practical, rational, tautological, and teleological. These 10 types were conceptually related to one another by subsuming them under more encompassing literature-based categories.
2004
We investigated the influence of scaffolding on students' scientific explanations over an eightweek middle school chemistry unit. Students received a focal lesson on an explanation framework and then completed investigation sheets containing explanation component scaffolds over the unit. Students received one of two treatments: Continuous, involving detailed scaffolds, or Faded, involving less supportive scaffolds over time. We analyzed their investigation sheets and pretests and posttests. During the unit, students in the Continuous treatment provided stronger explanations than those in the Faded treatment. Yet on the posttest for the items without scaffolds, the Faded group gave stronger explanations than the Continuous group for certain content areas. Scaffolding Scientific Explanations 3 Supporting Students' Construction of Scientific Explanations Using Scaffolded Curriculum Materials and Assessments Recent science reform efforts and standards documents advocate that students develop scientific inquiry practices (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; National Research Council, 1996). "Learning science involves young people entering into a different way of thinking about and explaining the natural world; becoming socialized to a greater or lesser extent into the practices of the scientific community with its particular purposes, ways of seeing, and ways of supporting its knowledge claims" (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994, p 8). One prominent inquiry practice in both the standards documents and research literature is the construction, analysis, and communication of scientific explanations. Although researchers cite explanations as important for classroom science, they are frequently omitted from classroom practice (Kuhn, 1993; Newton, Driver & Osborne 1999) and few research studies have examined the effectiveness of instructional practices in helping students construct explanations (Reznitskaya & Anderson, 2002). Our work focuses on an eight-week standards-based chemistry curriculum designed to support seventh grade students in their construction of scientific explanations. We investigated the effects of instructional and assessment scaffolds aimed at helping students construct scientific explanations. The Importance of Scientific Explanations Explanation construction is essential for science classroom practice for a variety of reasons. Research into scientists' practices portrays a picture where scientists construct arguments or explanations including weighing evidence, interpreting text, and evaluating claims (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000). Previous research in science education demonstrates that students who engage in explanation change or refine their image of science as well as enhance their understanding of the nature of science (Bell & Linn, 2000). Scientific explanations frame the goal of inquiry as understanding natural phenomenon, and articulating and convincing others of that understanding (Sandoval and Reiser, 1997). Lastly, constructing explanations can enhance students' understandings of the science content (Driver, Newton & Osborne, 2000). A deep understanding of science content is characterized by the ability to explain phenomena (Barron et. al. 1998). The science standards documents also reflect the importance of incorporating explanation in students' learning of science (
Why the Difference between Explanation and Argument Matters to Science Education
Science & Education, 2016
Contributing to the recent debate on whether or not explanations ought to be differentiated from arguments, this article argues that the distinction matters to science education. I articulate the distinction in terms of explanations and arguments having to meet different standards of adequacy. Standards of explanatory adequacy are important because they correspond to what counts as a good explanation in a science classroom, whereas a focus on evidence-based argumentation can obscure such standards of what makes an explanation explanatory. I provide further reasons for the relevance of not conflating explanations with arguments (and having standards of explanatory adequacy in view). First, what guides the adoption of the particular standards of explanatory adequacy that are relevant in a scientific case is the explanatory aim pursued in this context. Apart from explanatory aims being an important aspect of the nature of science, including explanatory aims in classroom instruction also promotes students seeing explanations as more than facts, and engages them in developing explanations as responses to interesting explanatory problems. Second, it is of relevance to science curricula that science aims at intervening in natural processes, not only for technological applications, but also as part of experimental discovery. Not any argument enables intervention in nature, as successful intervention specifically presupposes causal explanations. Students can fruitfully explore in the classroom how an explanatory account suggests different options for intervention.
This paper reports on the design and enactment of an instructional strategy aimed to support students in constructing scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, a new instructional framework called premise–reasoning–outcome (PRO) was conceptualized, developed, and tested over two years in four upper secondary (9th–10th grade) physics and chemistry classrooms. This strategy was conceptualized based on the understanding of the structure of a scientific explanation, which comprises three primary components: (a) premise – accepted knowledge that provides the basis of the explanation, (b) reasoning – logical sequences that follow from the premise, and (c) outcome – the phenomenon to be explained. A study was carried out to examine how the PRO strategy influenced students’ written explanations using multiple data sources (e.g. students’ writing, lesson observations, focus group discussions). Analysis of students’ writing indicates that explanations with a PRO structure were graded better by the teachers. In addition, students reported that the PRO strategy provided a useful organizational structure for writing scientific explanations, although they had some difficulties in identifying and using the structure. With the PRO as a new instructional tool, comparison with other explanation frameworks as well as implications for educational research and practice are discussed.