Search

Inquiry-based teaching is considered as contributing to content-related, procedural, and epistemic learning goals of science education. In this study, a quasi-experimental research design was utilized to investigate to what extent embedding inquiry activities in an explicit and an implicit instructional approach fosters students' ability to engage in three practices of scientific investigation (POSI): (1) formulating questions and hypotheses, (2) planning investigations, (3) analyzing and interpreting data. Both approaches were implemented in a classroom-based intervention conducted in a German upper secondary school (N = 222). Students' procedural knowledge of the three POSI was assessed with a paper-pencil test prior and post to the intervention, their content knowledge and dispositional factors (e.g., cognitive abilities) were gathered once. Results show that not only explicit but also implicit instruction fosters students' knowledge of POSI. While overall explicit instruction was found to be more effective, the findings indicate that the effectiveness depends considerably on the practice addressed. Moreover, findings suggest that both approaches were equally beneficial for all students regardless of their prior content knowledge and their prior procedural knowledge of POSI. Potential conditions for the success of explicit and implicit approaches as well as implications for instruction on POSI in science classrooms and for future research are discussed.

Inquiry-based instruction is an important teaching strategy in science education that can be implemented to achieve different learning goals (e.g. the learning of science content or of inquiry skills and strategies). Inquiry-based instruction is often combined with guidance attempting to assist students to effectively engage in inquiry activities and, through this engagement, reach the intended goals. In recent research, the type and amount of guidance needed to foster student's learning has received considerable attention. One challenge in interpreting the results of this line of research is the manifold meanings of the term 'guidance' and its implementation in inquiry-based instruction. Moreover, the effectiveness of a particular type and amount of guidance may also depend on the learning goal that is to be achieved. In this paper, we draw on existing research and theoretical considerations in attempting to disentangle three major dimensions in which the implementation of guidance may vary: (a) the degree of autonomy, (b) the degree of conceptual information, and (c) the cognitive domain of guidance. We discuss how these dimensions can be used to capture and systemise findings of existing studies as well as to infer desiderata for further research on the role of guidance in inquiry-based instruction.

Addressing student conceptions with instruction has been a major issue in physics education for decades. However, too often the focus is on treating student ideas as "misconceptions" rather than as potentially productive ideas with varying degrees of sophistication. This paper introduces "learning progressions" as models that describe ideas students are likely to hold at varying levels of sophistication. This guidance can help us to focus on students' existing understanding, rather than on what students do not yet know. With such nuanced and structured models of student learning, we can ensure that our assessments do not just check for whether students have the "right" answer, but obtain a more accurate "picture" of what students truly understand about the content to inform instruction that is responsive to students' learning needs.

Establishing nuanced interpretations of student thinking is central to formative assessment but difficult, especially for preservice teachers. Learning progressions (LPs) have been proposed as a framework for promoting interpretations of students' thinking; however, research is needed to investigate whether and how an LP can be used to support preservice teachers' interpretations. This article reports a study of two pairs of preservice physics teachers (PSPTs) working with video-based evidence of student thinking with and without an LP for force and motion. The PSPTs' discussions were video-recorded and investigated in terms of PSPTs' interpretations of student thinking: how they analyzed evidence of student thinking and identified implications for future learning. The PSPTs used the LP to focus attention on relevant aspects of student thinking and to begin to think about implications for student learning in a more step-like fashion, but did not use the LP to make sense of confusing student thinking or to draw specific implications for future learning. Recommendations for use of LPs in preservice teacher education are discussed.

Teachers' professional knowledge is assumed to be a key variable for effective teaching. As teacher education has the goal to enhance professional knowledge of current and future teachers, this knowledge should be described and assessed. Nevertheless, only a limited number of studies quantitatively measures physics teachers' professional knowledge. The study reported in this paper was part of a bigger project with the broader goal of understanding teacher professional knowledge. We designed a test instrument to assess the professional knowledge of physics teachers (N = 186) in the dimensions of "content knowledge" (CK), "pedagogical content knowledge" (PCK), and "pedagogical knowledge" (PK). A model describing the relationships between these three dimensions of professional knowledge was created to inform the design of the tests used to measure CK, PCK, and PK. In this paper, we describe the model with particular emphasis on the PCK part, and the subsequent PCK test development and its implementation in detail. We report different approaches to evaluate the PCK test, including the description of content validity, the examination of the internal structure of professional knowledge, and the analysis of construct validity by testing teachers across different school subjects, teachers from different school types, pre-service teachers, and physicists. Our findings demonstrate that our PCK test results could distinguish physics teachers from the other groups tested. The PCK test results could not be explained by teachers' CK or PK, cognitive abilities, computational skills, or science knowledge.

Research on conceptual change assumes that students enter a science classroom with prior(mis-)conceptions. When being exposed to instruction, students are supposed to develop or change their conceptions to (more) scientific concepts. As a consequence, instruction typically concentrates on appropriate examples demonstrating that students' conceptions are limited and need to be extended or revised ("Posner criteria"). Based on our studies on students' conceptual development in Physics, we rather argue that students typically lack any (explanatory) conceptual understanding of the science content offered. We therefore conclude that a focus on missing conceptions is much more promising than a focus on misconceptions. This paper addresses theoretical arguments and empirical results supporting our proposition as well as suggests possible implications for the design of instruction and for teacher education. (Contains 2 tables, 4 figures, and 5 notes.)

In this study we investigated junior high school students' processes of argumentation and cognitive development in science and socioscientific lessons. Detailed studies of the relationship between argumentation and the development of scientific knowledge are rare. Using video and audio documents of small group and classroom discussions, the quality and frequency of students' argumentation was analyzed using a schema based on the work of Toulmin ([1958]). In parallel, students' development and use of scientific knowledge was also investigated, drawing on a schema for determining the content and level of abstraction of students' meaning-making. These two complementary analyses enabled an exploration of their impact on each other. The microanalysis of student discourse showed that: (a) when engaging in argumentation students draw on their prior experiences and knowledge; (b) such activity enables students to consolidate their existing knowledge and elaborate their science understanding at relatively high levels of abstraction. The results also suggest that students can acquire a higher quality of argumentation that consists of well-grounded knowledge with a relatively low level of abstraction. The findings further suggest that the main indicator of whether or not a high quality of argument is likely to be attained is students' familiarity and understanding of the content of the task. The major implication of this work for developing argumentation in the classroom is the need to consider the nature and extent of students' content-specific experiences and knowledge prior to asking them to engage in argumentation. (Contains 6 tables, 1 figure and 4 notes.)

One aim of physics laboratory instruction is to help students connect theory to practice. So experiments are often chosen in order to "demonstrate" specific concepts. Furthermore, students are expected to approach phenomena in a scientific way, that is, they should develop a hypothesis and plan their experiments accordingly. Although it is usually not stated explicitly, these instructional aims require that students have some conceptual knowledge before they start to carry out experiments. Otherwise, they would not be able to connect theory to practice or to develop a hypothesis. Empirical evidence from process-based studies of university students' labwork activities indicates that during practical work, students rarely express their conceptual knowledge explicitly. Rather, experiments seem to be the means by which students discover and "stabilize" conceptual understanding when learning physics. Furthermore, students are much more likely to develop concepts that relate to similar events (phenomenon-based concepts) rather than concepts that arise from "theories" (model-based concepts) which may explain their observations. Implications of these results for the design of laboratory activities are discussed. (Contains 1 footnote, 2 tables and 4 figures.)

Research on conceptual change is still a powerful framework for empirical investigations on students' learning of science. During recent years, an increasing body of research has explored students' concepts prior and subsequent to instruction, leading to an extensive documentation of students' concepts including the difficulties and opportunities of teaching for conceptual change. Though the research on conceptual change can inform practitioners about students' ideas of science and students' learning difficulties, little is known about the processes of conceptual development and students' use of developed concepts. Exploring the nature of the processes may help to understand what kind of concepts appear plausible and fruitful to students and how students apply their knowledge to scientific tasks. In order to investigate processes of the development of concepts, videoing a total of 45 students from grades 8 and 11 was carried out while they were working on physics tasks in small groups. The dimensions of content, level of abstraction, and time were used to describe the quality of students' situated knowledge as well as usage and changes of the knowledge when students were confronted with similar tasks. Assuming the notion "concept" refers to rule-based knowledge, the dimension of abstraction was used to distinguish between concrete (non-conceptual) and rule-based (conceptual) knowledge. Results on the processes indicate that most of the high school students' activities did not refer to conceptual knowledge. Moreover, explanations based on physics concepts which were offered to the students were rarely used. Furthermore, if students came up with conceptual descriptions of occurring phenomena, these descriptions showed a high variability in their content.

In the literature, learners' cognitive development is mainly discussed with respect to changes in learners' content-dependent knowledge (conceptual change or growth). Additional dimensions of time and complexity may also be taken into account to describe cognitive processes in at least three dimensions. We discuss these three dimensions of content, complexity, and time theoretically and show empirically what results can be found with such a framework. The primary database consists of 27 students who worked in groups of three on physics tasks during three sessions in an experimental setting. All activities were videotaped and analyzed in great detail. Results indicate that students' meanings always refer to a narrow area of content, are developed bottom-up with respect to complexity, and show time-dependent dynamics in which maxima of 30 seconds and 5 minutes are important time scales. Comparison with outcomes of additional experimental settings on the same topic with more and less advanced students indicate the results to have a greater validity. (Contains 5 figures, 2 tables and 5 footnotes.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Pädagogik is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)