Complete report
Science consists of a
body of knowledge and a set of processes by which the knowledge is produced.
Although
these have
traditionally been treated separately in science instruction, there has been a
shift to an integration of
knowledge and
processes, or set of practices, in how science should be taught and assessed.
This study explores whether a general overall
mastery of the processes drives learning in new science content areas
and if
this overall mastery can be improved
through engaged science learning.
Through a review of literature, the paper
conceptualizes this general process
mastery as scientific sensemaking,
defines the
sub-dimensions, and presents a new measure of the construct
centered in scenarios of general interest
to young adolescents.
Using a dataset
involving over 2500 6th and 8th grade
students, the paper shows that scientific sensemaking scores
can predict content learning gains and that this
relationship is consistent across student characteristics, content of
instruction, and classroom environment. Further,
students who are behaviorally and cognitively engaged during
science classroom
activities show greater growth
in scientific sensemaking,
showing a reciprocal relationship between
sensemaking abilityand effective science
instruction.
Findings from this work support early instruction on sensemaking
activities to better position
students to learn new
scientific content.
No comments:
Post a Comment