Journal of Research in Science Teaching最新文献

Grappling with uncertainty is an essential element of students' science learning and sense-making processes, yet literature is limited regarding how teachers can facilitate and use student scientific uncertainty as a pedagogical resource in their classrooms. Furthermore, progress on pedagogical practice depends on both the ability to notice one's perceptions and engage in opportunities to experience and reflect on new instructional approaches. To date, there are few professional development experiences explored in literature that explicitly aim to enhance teachers' awareness and pedagogical practice regarding the use and facilitation of student scientific uncertainty. As such, this qualitative study follows a group of 11 middle school science teachers before and after participating in a week-long practice-based professional development (P-BPD) specifically designed to foster teachers' ability to use student uncertainty as a pedagogical resource. Interviews were conducted and analyzed prior to the P-BPD, immediately after the P-BPD, and the year following to measure shifts in perceptions over time. Additionally, classroom practice was observed both before and the year following the P-BPD. Overall, we found that teachers' awareness of how to use student scientific uncertainty grew both in their expressed perceptions and in their observed classroom enactment. After engaging in the P-BPD, many teachers expressed an enhanced awareness of the productive potential uncertainty can have, as well as increased understanding of potential sources and responses to student uncertainty. Additionally, in the post-implementation observations, most of the teachers demonstrated more diverse use of uncertainty navigation strategies, intentionally raising, maintaining, and reducing scientific uncertainty more often. Teachers were observed using student ideas and uncertainties to drive the trajectory of their lessons more consistently. Notably, we report counterexamples for teachers who demonstrated less or no shifts in perceptions or practice. Furthermore, teachers explicitly identified experiences from the P-BPD that fostered shifts in both their perceptions and practice.

Current science education reform efforts have identified sensemaking as an important goal of science education, and science education researchers have studied what constitutes the sensemaking process in the science classroom. Because the studies of sensemaking are loosely linked to those of scientific reasoning, however, they have provided little practical insight into how students can make scientific sense, rather than any sense, of natural phenomena. Therefore, in this position paper, we discuss the close relationship between sensemaking and abduction. Sensemaking refers to a prolonged process of resolving a gap or inconsistency in current knowledge and understanding by constructing an explanation of a phenomenon. Abduction is a form of scientific reasoning to generate explanatory hypotheses about the evidence embedded in a phenomenon based on available resources. Abduction can play a crucial role in sensemaking by providing a mechanism for generating a plausible explanation of a target phenomenon and should be adapted for science teaching and learning for students' sensemaking through engagement in science practices. In particular, to develop scientific sensemaking in students, the teacher should help students identify critical evidence, provide students with critical resources, and encourage students to use the method of multiple working hypotheses, so that the students can construct scientifically sound and valid explanations of natural phenomena. It is suggested that further research explore and collect exemplary cases of science teachers effectively supporting students to achieve scientific sensemaking through abduction.

A systematic literature review across multiple scientific disciplines was conducted to explore students' understanding of atomic structure, focusing on students' ACs. A total of 112 publications between 1972 and 2023 were selected for the study. Within the selected body of literature, 851 instances of ACs were distributed across students ranging from third grade to graduate-level physical chemistry. As students' atomic structure understanding becomes more sophisticated, multiple intermediate atomic structure models were described in the path from a pre-atom understanding of the composition of matter to a quantitative understanding of the atom's quantum-mechanical characteristics. A series of construct maps were created for each intermediate atomic structure model, organizing students' ACs in a sophistication hierarchy, and using threshold concepts as capstones. Each construct map level is described and selected ACs that exemplify each construct map sublevel of understanding are discussed. The series of construct maps encompass a model of student understanding to diagnose students' level of understanding of atomic structure. This work intends to highlight students' different levels of understanding for the structure of the atom, with the assumption that student knowledge can deepen in sophistication from students' current knowledge. This work opens the possibility of designing an instrument to assess students' understanding of atomic structure using an ordered multiple-choice approach.

Student engagement is widely considered to be a multidimensional construct consisting of behavioral, cognitive, and affective components. Recent research has examined student engagement in science learning contexts using holistic approaches that account for multidimensionality through the identification of engagement profiles. However, it is not yet clear whether identified science engagement profiles are consistent across different samples, different learning environments, or different modes of measurement. Using data from three extant datasets involving middle- and high-school aged youth, we explored the consistency of students' situational engagement profiles across science learning environments (formal and informal) and modes of measurement (experience sampling and end-of-class reports). Results from latent profile analyses of students' behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement identified four common profiles across the three datasets, though each dataset had its own unique profile solution (ranging from five to seven profiles). Consistent profiles across the three datasets included universally low, moderate, recreational, and full engagement. Three additional engagement profiles were identified (rational, purposeful, and busy engagement), though they emerged inconsistently across the samples. Findings speak to the applicability of conceptual frameworks of engagement to science learning contexts. Results are discussed considering environmental (formal vs. informal learning environments) and methodological considerations (experience sampling vs. end of class report).

Participation in citizen science, a research approach in which nonscientists take part in performing research, is a growing practice in schools. A main premise in school-based citizen science is that through their participation, students and teachers make meaningful contributions to the advancement of science. However, such initiatives may encounter difficulties in drawing on students' and teachers' knowledge and incorporating their voice in research processes and outcomes, partly due to established knowledge hierarchies in both science and schools. This research theoretically examines misuses of students' and teachers' knowledge in school-based citizen science that can be defined as an epistemic injustice. This term describes wrongful evaluations and considerations of people's knowledge or perspectives. Based on existing theoretical work on epistemic injustice, we first map out epistemic justifications for public participation in science and discuss deficiencies in current forms of citizen science that lead to the perseverance of epistemic injustice. Then, we identify and characterize four forms through which epistemic injustice may be manifested in school-based citizen science. Our theoretical analysis is complemented by illustrative examples from citizen science projects enacted in schools, demonstrating cases where epistemic injustice toward students and teachers was either instigated or mitigated. We discuss implications toward educational goals and the design of school-based citizen science, suggesting that epistemic injustice can be reduced or avoided by delegating authorities to schools, maximizing teacher and student agency, and leveraging schools' community connections. Overall, this research establishes theoretical grounds for examinations of epistemic injustice in school-based citizen science.

Recently, there has been a surge of literature on the implementation of translanguaging pedagogy and practices in science education settings. By activating and validating learners' full communicative repertoire, translanguaging holds promise to build an inclusive science learning community where multilingual learners' ways of knowing are not only respected but celebrated and extended. Drawing from the dual synergy between translanguaging and science education on multimodalities and social justice agenda, this systematic review synthesized the key features of empirical research published from 2010 to 2023 that reported translanguaging practices in global K-12 formal and informal science education settings. The results indicated high heterogeneity in the studied socio-geographic landscapes and in the definition, implementation, and implication of translanguaging practices. Analysis of the science sense-making practices indicates some epistemic practices are more widely represented than others, with marginal global differences observed. To maintain and embolden the synergy between science education and translanguaging, our findings recommend increased collaboration between Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathmatics (STEM) education and bilingual education and collaboration between teachers and researchers to develop an effective translanguaging environment for science learning.

An inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities for marginalized students (i.e., opportunity gaps) leads to challenges in identifying effective study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking in higher education. While students benefit when these skills are taught explicitly through co-curricular workshops and courses, these interventions often require significant time investment from faculty and students, underscoring a need for alternative interventions that provide students with access to resources related to these skills. Course syllabi are one potential resource that can address these needs, and we asked to what extent biology syllabi are used for this purpose. We collected a national sample of introductory biology syllabi and used content analysis to determine if syllabi are learner-centered and whether they incorporate information on study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking. We found that most syllabi are not learner-centered, encourage ineffective study behaviors, did not include metacognition recommendations, and include incomplete academic help-seeking recommendations. We make several recommendations on how to incorporate complete, accurate information regarding study behaviors, metacognition, and academic help-seeking.

Research on translanguaging in science and engineering education has grown rapidly. Studies carried out across diverse contexts converge in their commitment to fostering equity in science and engineering learning for linguistically marginalized learners. However, the rapid growth of this research area has exposed different approaches to conceptualizing “equity” itself. The purpose of this review of literature was to examine what equity approaches have undergirded research on translanguaging in US K–12 science and engineering education and whether these approaches vary over time and across contexts. We systematically analyzed studies (N = 15) using the four equity approaches articulated in a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Findings of our review indicate that, while studies aimed at increasing opportunity and access to high-quality science and engineering learning (Approach 1) and, to a lesser extent, identification and representation with science and engineering (Approach 2) were the two most prevalent equity approaches, studies focused on expanding what constitutes science and engineering (Approach 3) and seeing science and engineering as part of justice movements (Approach 4) were somewhat less common. Furthermore, justice-oriented approaches to equity (Approaches 3 and 4) were increasingly visible in the literature since 2020 as well as in research carried out in nontraditional educational contexts (e.g., out-of-school programs, classes outside of the core school subjects). Based on these findings, we propose the need for future research that (a) explicitly conceptualizes and operationalizes constructs related to equity (e.g., what is meant by “achievement” and how it is measured), (b) examines the possibilities and tensions associated with expanding what constitutes science and engineering in traditional educational contexts, (c) leverages the affordances of multiple STEM subjects for addressing justice issues impacting linguistically marginalized communities, and (d) iterates on the equity approaches themselves.

Science teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning are a vital component of teachers' professional competence and are often assumed to impact classroom practice. To date, these beliefs have been predominantly investigated regarding teaching and learning in general or for a particular science subject (e.g., physics). It remains to be determined whether these beliefs are similar across different goals within a subject. The study reported addresses this question by investigating and comparing beliefs about teaching and learning regarding two prominent main goals of science education: content goals that refer to scientific phenomena, laws, theories, and disciplinary core ideas and procedural goals that refer to scientific procedures and practices. To that end, data from 170 German teachers were collected in 2019 and 2020 with an online questionnaire. After modeling the data and assessing the quality of measurement via Rasch analysis techniques, subsequent t-tests were employed to compare beliefs. Results reveal that science teachers' beliefs vary between both main goals. For instance, teachers believe that achieving procedural goals requires primarily doing science with lesser relevance of discussing and elaborating with students explicitly the rules and strategies for engaging appropriately in scientific practices (e.g., control of variables strategy). In contrast, teachers believe that for achieving content goals, explicit instruction about corresponding conceptual knowledge is of higher relevance. Furthermore, the analysis reveals differences in teachers' beliefs about their own abilities. Teachers typically believe they are more able to teach and deal with content goals compared with procedural goals. The differences reported may help to understand research on teachers' classroom practice and can inform teacher training and professional development.