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Developing Preservice Elementary Teachers' Views of Nature of Science by Engaging them in Argumentation in Scientific and Socioscientific Contexts

Christine McDonald    

The current understanding of students’ group metacognition is based on a relatively small amount of research. The research has focused mainly on the development of strategies for problem solving. The potential for group solving to develop students’ group skills combined with problem solving skills has remained largely unexplored. This study sought to address the void by developing a conceptual model to inform the design of scaffolds to facilitate group metacognition during mathematical problem solving in CSCL environments. An initial conceptual framework based on the literature from metacognition, cooperative learning, cooperative group metacognition, and computer-supported collaborative learning was used to inform the study. In order to achieve the study aim, a design research methodology incorporating two cycles was used. The first cycle focused on within-group metacognition for sixteen groups working around the computer; the second cycle included between-group metacognition for six groups working within  a computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. Data were collected through observation, questionnaires, checklists, group diaries, and Knowledge Forum® notes. Data analysis incorporated the results from a constant comparison method of data analysis and results from identifying concepts from the conceptual framework and the literature review. The study found that providing groups with group metacognitive scaffolds resulted in groups planning, monitoring, and evaluating the task and team aspects of their group work. The metacognitive strategies allowed students to focus on how their group was completing the problem solving taks and working together as a team.

Transcript

Interviewer:    I’d like to welcome Christine McDonald, welcome Christine

Christine McDonald: Hello

Interviewer: Could you please tell us firstly what is your research about?

Christine McDonald: Well I basically looked at Pre Service Science Teachers who were in the Primary Science Bachelor’s Degree and I designed an intervention to try and improve their views of the nature of science using argumentation as a context for that.

Interviewer: What do you mean by argumentation?

Christine McDonald: Well previous studies in this area of nature of science have used different methods to try and improve students or teachers’ views of the nature of science and this was a new strategy some sort of emerging research is coming out saying that argumentation maybe an effective way or a platform to try and improve their views so I tried to incorporate some of those argumentation based strategies within my study.

Interviewer: And how did you go about conducting this research, what methodology did you use?

Christine McDonald: Okay I did it within a science content course in the bachelor of education degree and I basically had 16 students or pre service teachers’ consent to participate in the study and of those 16, I selected 5 case study participants and intensively followed those participants throughout the study and they took part in all interventions and interviews and questionnaires throughout the study.

Interviewer: What sort of questions did you ask your participants?

Christine McDonald: Basically at the start they completed a survey about their views of the nature of science so that gave me a sort of a pre intervention idea of their understanding, they also completed a couple of other surveys which assessed their ability to argue in different context and I also just got some initial information from them, just their background science experience and schooling and things like that and I did that again at the end so that was the post intervention sort of assessment and throughout the study they took part in a number of different activities and surveys and interviews so that gave me an idea of how their views were changing throughout the intervention.

Interviewer: What were your findings?

Christine McDonald: All 5 participants had what was classified as a limited or a naïve understanding of most aspects of the nature of science which were typically found in previous studies so a lot of studies have found that often people’s views of nature of science are quite naïve and throughout the intervention there was evidence of those views changing for 4 of the participants and so the post intervention assessment showed that for 4 of the 5 participants their views of nature of science had improved or enhanced to what we call a partially informed or an informed understanding so a more desirable understanding but for one participant there was very little change of his views.

Interviewer: And what will the implications be for education and for research more broadly?

Christine McDonald: Okay well with understandings of the nature of science, with the push for scientific literacy a key component of that is an understanding of the nature of science so understanding how science works, the values and beliefs inherent to scientific knowledge so if students and teachers or pre service teachers don’t have an understanding or a contemporary understanding of those types of issues, it’s very hard for them to convey those to their students when they’re out teaching as science teachers so what I aimed to do was to give them some strategies to improve their views and also some things that they could perhaps take into the classroom or reflect on when they’re teachers to try ensure that students won’t come out of schooling feeling like science is this exact elite profession that they can’t tack into, gave it more of a real life context.

Interviewer: Well thank you very much for sharing your research with us

Christine McDonald: Thank you