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Recently there have been calls to integrate engineering design experiences to support students’ scientific understanding. There is a need for instructional strategies in which learners are encouraged to identify and reflect on ways scientific principles can be applied to inform their designs and evaluate alternative designs. Studies show that the inclusion of contrasting cases can improve students’ conceptual understanding and reasoning. Yet, such tasks depend on how they are scaffolded. In this study, pre-service elementary teachers in a conceptual physics course analyzed contrasting solutions to a design problem. Two forms of scaffolds were embedded to facilitate case evaluation: 1) identify similarities and differences and 2) evaluate and produce an argument for a “good” design solution. We investigated the scientific ideas that the participants used as they contrasted multiple design solutions and the impact of the two approaches in students’ understanding of heat transfer. We found no significant differences in students’ conceptual understanding, but the argumentation condition had a significantly larger number of scientific ideas ‘cited’, ‘explained’ or ‘applied’ in their solutions,. The results suggest that contrasting designs with argumentation may be a promising intervention to facilitate students to use science concepts in engineering design. Future work is needed in order to investigate better scaffolds that can help students’ increase in conceptual learning.
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Learning the control-of-variables strategy during an informal science lesson on popping popcorn
Understanding experimental design (e.g. control of variable strategy or CVS) is foundational for scientific reasoning. Previous research has demonstrated that demonstrations with cognitive conflict (e.g. asking students to evaluate and explain different experimental designs) are effective in promoting children’s scientific reasoning, however, the implementation of this approach often requires significant instructional time and resources. This study reports the impact of a brief, scalable intervention on one component of scientific reasoning, understanding experimental design, by providing brief instruction on the control-of-variable strategy (CVS), embedded in a food science activity (popping popcorn). Threehundred and seven (307) 3rd-5th graders in the midwestern US participated in either a CVS intervention or a demonstration on the science of popcorn without a CVS intervention. Performance on a pre-activity test (involving identification of good and bad experiments) did not differ between conditions. By contrast, postactivity performance was significantly greater for classes who received the CVS intervention. Thus, a brief discussion of the CVS embedded within a food-science demonstration can have a meaningful impact on children’s understanding of conducting a quality experiment. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of a simple, low-cost intervention for CVS that is potentially scalable.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1906706
- PAR ID:
- 10490585
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor & Francis Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of Science Education
- ISSN:
- 0950-0693
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 20
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Recently there have been calls to integrate engineering design experiences to support students’ scientific understanding. There is a need for instructional strategies in which learners are encouraged to identify and reflect on ways scientific principles can be applied to inform their designs and evaluate alternative designs. Studies show that the inclusion of contrasting cases can improve students’ conceptual understanding and reasoning. Yet, such tasks depend on how they are scaffolded. In this study, pre-service elementary teachers in a conceptual physics course analyzed contrasting solutions to a design problem. Two forms of scaffolds were embedded to facilitate case evaluation: 1) identify similarities and differences and 2) evaluate and produce an argument for a “good” design solution. We investigated the scientific ideas that the participants used as they contrasted multiple design solutions and the impact of the two approaches in students’ understanding of heat transfer. We found no significant differences in students’ conceptual understanding, but the argumentation condition had a significantly larger number of scientific ideas ‘cited’, ‘explained’ or ‘applied’ in their solutions,. The results suggest that contrasting designs with argumentation may be a promising intervention to facilitate students to use science concepts in engineering design. Future work is needed in order to investigate better scaffolds that can help students’ increase in conceptual learning.more » « less
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Everyday activities such as cooking a meal are natural opportunities for “challenging” family talk, which promotes cognitive development by prompting explanations and elaborations. Our study investigates a light intervention to increase the frequency of challenging family STEM talk during an everyday activity. Sixty-two families with children (mean age = 9.49) recorded their conversations while popping popcorn using either a standard recipe or a recipe with embedded wh-question prompts (e.g., Why did some kernels not pop?). Conversations were transcribed and coded to measure four qualities of challenging STEM talk: STEM words, STEM explanations, spontaneous questions, and elaborations (or interactive turn-taking). The results demonstrate that families who received wh-question prompts embedded into the recipe produced 3–5 times more instances of challenging STEM talk than families who received no prompts. These results provide evidence for a light intervention that increases family STEM talk through a familiar, everyday activity.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2024.2310526
