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Apr 15, 2019 · Students are not blank slates when they are first exposed to the learning of science. On the contrary they bring to the science learning task intuitive understandings of the physical world, which can be very different from the scientific concepts and theories presented in the science classroom (Driver and Easley, 1978; Clement, 1982; McCloskey ...
For more than a century, educators have argued that students should understand how scientific knowledge is constructed (Rudolph, 2005). One rationale that is often invoked, but not empirically tested, is that understanding science makes for a more informed citizenry and supports democratic participation.
- Participants
- Design
- Pilot Phase
- Intervention Structure and Content
- Materials and Measures
- Procedure
- Coding
Students from five classrooms in two elementary schools (one public, one private and parochial) in the Northeast United States were invited to participate. Informed parental consent was received for 64 children. These students (52% female) were aged between 5.5 and 7.5 years old, either in kindergarten or first grade during the period of this study...
This study aims to examine the effects of two independent variables on students’ learning of science concepts: playing vs. not playing and telling vs. not telling, simply called. Thus, the study followed 2 (playing vs. not playing) × 2 (telling vs. not telling) between-participants experimental design and the classes of students were randomly assig...
The pretest, posttest, and intervention were developed and tested to ensure that they were effective and appropriate for this age group through an iterative pilot testing process. In this phase, participating children experienced the pretest, intervention, and posttest in one, approximately 45-min session in an on-campus laboratory. Participants we...
The intervention was specifically designed to mimic a real science lesson that kindergarteners and first-graders might experience. Specifically, the lesson contained two sections, a large-group introduction followed by small-group investigations. The intervention lessons taught participants two science concepts about light. Section 1 focused on bas...
The primary dependent variables were students’ understanding of the two target concepts that light is needed to see things and that light travels in a straight line, which were assessed with a 12-question interview developed by the team. Half of the questions targeted each concept. Questions centered around contexts students were familiar with in r...
At the first testing time, participants completed the pretest to measure their baseline understanding of light and participated in the inhibitory control and working memory tasks measuring their executive function skills. Tasks were given in a fixed order: pretest, HTSK, Delay of Gratification, Backwards Digit Span, Counting Recall. To control for ...
For the pre- and posttests, participants received one point for each correct answer on forced-choice questions. Open-ended explanation questions were scored from 0 to 3. The full 3 points were awarded only when students correctly and explicitly communicated the target concept (i.e., “you need light to see things” or “light always travels in a strai...
- Lin Zhang, Jennifer Van Reet
- 2021
Nov 30, 2013 · Abstract. This paper aims at shedding light on what students can “construct” when they learn science and how this construction process may be supported. Constructivism is a pluralist theory of ...
Aug 5, 2017 · These entities, concepts and practices are unlikely to be discovered by individuals through their own observations of the natural world (Driver et al., 1994). From this, scientific knowledge becomes public knowledge that is constructed and communicated through the culture and social institutions of science. Through group interactions, students ...
Jul 3, 2013 · This paper aims at shedding light on what students can “construct” when they learn science and how this construction process may be supported. Constructivism is a pluralist theory of science education. As a consequence, I support, there are several points of view concerning this construction process. Firstly, I stress that constructivism is rooted in two fields, psychology of cognitive ...
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Jan 15, 2022 · Students need to use ideas to make sense of phenomena to develop integrated understanding of science ideas, know how to make use of those ideas, and then apply those understandings in new situations. A second implication for teaching is the importance of developing units and approaching instruction with the framework that enables students’ understanding to develop over time.
