Pupil Diaries of Animal Watching - Brine Shrimps in a Bottle

BERA 2000 Session 6.15 Friday September 8th 13.30 - 15.30

Pupil diaries of animal watching - brine shrimps in a bottle.

Stephen P.Tomkins

Sue Dale Tunnicliffe

Homerton College, Cambridge. CB2 2PH

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Cardiff University, September 7-10 2000

Abstract

Observing is a content independent process in which the observations made are inseparable from the processes of mind that go with them. Previous work suggest that pupils, given an observation task, may report what they think they should or might be seeing as well as what is actually seen. Children also employ metaphor, imagery and proximal personal experience in descriptions. As part of a study into the effect of an extended period of observation on pupils’ interpretation and hypothesis-making,

twelve-year-old pupils, from two matched English comprehensive secondary schools observed, without any prior teaching, bottle ecosystems of brine shrimps (small salt water crustacea). This group discussion-observation was followed by a week of personal observation and individual diary keeping at home. Eight pupils recorded their thoughts and observations about the animals. Analysis of the conversations and diaries was carried out by assigning statements to categories. The results indicate that pupils not only notice from their own undirected observations salient structural/anatomical and behavioural features but that they also spontaneously raised questions and answered them from their own observations. Pupils interpreted what they observed using their own experiences including science knowledge and topical news items. Clear personal constructs and hypotheses emerged. It is suggested that sustained observation provides a powerful base from which better classroom learning, interpretation and hypothesis making may develop.

Introduction

This study seeks to explore how 12 year-old pupils form their own meaningful structures both through the task of open-ended diary writing and through small group discussion about scientific phenomena observed. We find that diary-keeping tells us much about what pupils think, while diary writing, as they reflect on their previous knowledge, discussions with peers or their own observations made during the task set. We report our quantitative and qualitative findings on the nature of what is seen and observed by pupils set an observational task, and what inference, prediction and hypothesis making goes on when they record their ideas.

Among the process skills required for Science, in the England and Wales National Curriculum, observation forms a part of the expectation for pupil achievement in attaining certain levels of competence. Focused exploration, through careful observing and investigation is expected to be carried out first-hand. Observation is a fundamental cognitive ability (Popper 1972, Millar 1994) and is therefore enshrined, in the U.K. as in many other countries, within the contemporary idea of defined ‘Key Skills’. Unquestioned evidence of the gains from children’s observation may be acquired through examining what children spontaneously say and write. It is well known that young learners selectively give value to new sensory information, compare it to that knowledge already acquired and then generate new meanings for that information in the light of what is already known (Osborne and Wittrock 1983). This generative learning process, arising from observation, is not silent but is hugely assisted by the nature and construction of language. Furthermore, the use of informal speech, peer group discussion and writing clarifies pupil thinking, activates prior knowledge and assists the birth of new concepts as the child struggles with their own linguistic expression (Healy and Barr 1991). But few science studies have tried to link this talking and subsequent writing from the experience of observational data through to an expression of meaningful interpretation, such as the integration of data and inference or the making of new hypotheses (Keys 1999). Children observing something together might be expected to assist each other. It is therefore to be expected that discussion of what is observed will be productive; it is known, for example, that interaction between peers with differing conceptual views supports the development of a pupil's conceptual growth much better than if views concur (Howe, Tolmie and Rogers, 1990).

Pupil writing, as well as such group discussion, informs us about pupils' thinking and might be expected to shed light on the process of observation. In this study we have employed diary writing (with an invitation to draw pictures as well) as a means of access to children's thinking about what they have observed. Mary Hanrahan (1999) sees journal writing as deeply supportive of developing scientific literacy. We do not expect recorded observation to be highly objective, for whether through writing or talk, understanding may express itself initially and most powerfully as metaphor (Black 1962, Lakoff and Johnston 1980, Ogborn and Martins 1996) and not as coherent factual observation or inference. In their formulation of ideas through talking or writing, children construct meanings from all sorts of personal experience, both physical and biological. In examining what children observe it is useful to think in terms of their ‘mental models’ which allow the owner to make predictions, which may then be tested empirically (Duit and Glynn 1996). Where a group of pupils discuss together what they observe, an individual child’s ‘expressed model’ may emerge, be shared and passed on (Gilbert and Priest 1997). In a less pressured context, diary writing may be additionally valuable. Hanrahan (1999) expresses anxiety about the power relationship between teachers and students. It is not easy to convince children in open ‘brain-storming’ session that they really have permission not to know the right answers. She supports what many teachers experience, namely that pupils will discount their own ideas and feelings in favour of what they think the teacher wants to hear from them. She reports that in such a context, pupils invited to express their ideas and feelings in personal journal form, to which the teacher responds in some affirmatory way, will further their progress in science learning.

This work is part of a larger study made on pupils observing brine shrimps for the first time. Our interest in the phenomenon of observation and its inherent value in driving science process stems from our experiences with primary and secondary pupils looking at brine shrimps (Dockery and Tomkins 2000; Tunnicliffe and Reiss 1999). Brine shrimps (Artemia franciscana) are novel to the majority of British school children and even some biology teachers. The egg-cysts of these small crustacea are easily purchased from shops supplying the aquarium fish-keeping hobby. Brine shrimps are sold as a readily hatched source of aquatic larvae for feeding the newly spawned fry of aquarium fish. The brine shrimps are easily observed in a plastic bottle and provide motivating and captivating viewing of many of the life stages of an animal. The adult brine shrimp genders are distinguished by colour and shape. Females have small antennae and a large brood-sac that contains eggs and are generally more orange. Males have large antennae and no egg sacs and are generally paler or blue-green if coloured. Adult males and females swim tightly together in mate-guarding pairs for some days before mating and releasing fertilised eggs. These animals are easily and cheaply kept at home or in school.

Figure 1

(a) left: A brine shrimp bottle ecosystem, as used in this investigation and kept by pupils for their diary observations.

(b) right. Brine shrimps, as they would be seen by pupils. Scale line one millimetre.

Above, a mate guarding pair, female with male (below),

middle, a male brine shrimp with large antennae;

below, a female brine shrimp, with egg sac, feeding from the bottom layer.

Methodology

The school based work was carried out, in or near the City of Cambridge, UK, in four comparably matched state (non-fee paying) comprehensive schools with year seven pupils towards the end of their first year of secondary education. These pupils had been taught on broadly similar school science courses. Each volunteer group, of four pupils, in the schools consisted of two boys and two girls. Groups of pupils in the schools were therefore matched for age, gender and ability. They were visited for about 30-40 minutes once per week, in a science lab, as an extra curricular ‘science club’ activity. Groups of pupils were initially asked to observe a brine shrimp bottle without prior teaching or instruction. With respect to the task of observing brine shrimps, all the participants were naive. The animals themselves were described to the pupils as ‘brine shrimps’ but were not classified or anything about their biology explained. Each group was initially presented (session 1) with one brine shrimp bottle ecosystem and all conversations tape-recorded. All pupils were asked in the same way “to talk amongst yourselves, for ten minutes, about what you can see, what is going on, or what you think may be happening, in the bottle”. The time allowed was considered an ample opportunity for collecting conversation without straining attention span. The perceived role of the researcher was as a visiting teacher-researcher wanting to know about the pupils’ response to some new curricular material that would be ‘enjoyable’ to the students and would ‘advance our understanding of the animals’. Pupils in half the schools were then given a bottle to take home (see Dockery and Tomkins, 2000), with only instruction on where to keep it, and asked to record a diary of observations for two weeks. Each of these (diary-keeping) pupils was told to put the animals on a ‘sunny window sill’ and asked to keep a daily record of the shrimp ecosystem for two weeks, recording “what you can see, what is going on, or what you think might be happening in the bottle”, writing or drawing for the diary as they pleased. Each pupil kept a diary. For this each pupil was given a large A4 unlined (plain) sheet book. Here the only additional onus on these students was that they would be required to ‘report back’ orally on their observations each week.

Analysis

Tape recordings were made with a boy and a girl on each side of a single stereo-microphone, enabling each individual to be identified by name on the recording. The eight diaries were analysed similarly by reading them and making a tabulated summary (see also below). Some of the drawings in the diaries were valuable as evidence of both what was observed and what was conjectured and what was missed. The summative list of observations made by pupils after their second tape-recorded session were also similarly analysed.

There are a great many ways of analysing children’s conversations and writing. They may be looked at as presentations of factual perception, as evidence of science learning, as metaphor, as conversations where ideas build, as affective commentary, as illustrative of anecdote or story, etc. In this study tape transcripts and diaries were analysed using methods developed by SDT (Tunnicliffe and Reiss 1999) and derived from standard methodologies (Misheler 1986, Cortazzi 1993, and MacWhinney 1995). For analysis, tape transcripts and diaries were read through and re-read until the content could be categorised as coherently as possible into a large number of classes of commentary remarks (factual observations, affective statements, interpretations, hypotheses, etc.). There is inevitably an arbitrariness involved in this exercise, but we have tried to employ the most parsimonious of non-overlapping categories that reflect the rich diversity of responses of the pupils to these organisms. An advantage of this methodology, as with any quantitative approach, is that it ensures that all the data are treated equally, preventing conclusions from being drawn from only occasional pupil observation.

For each group discussion we recognised discrete oral contributions as a ‘conversation’. For each analysed diary we recognised a discrete written diary comment as a ‘sentence’, even if it was not strictly in grammatical sentence form. Within these conversations and sentences we scored observations made within the tabulated categories. Categories were grouped within four overarching categories. The latter were structure (e.g. anatomical features of the animals, their colours, shapes etc.), behaviour (e.g. swimming movements, mating) non-shrimp features (e.g. descriptions of the environment in the bottle) and lastly, science processes (e.g. interpretations, misconceptions, hypotheses, etc.). We recognised up to 12 sub-categories within each of these over-arching categories, e.g. within structure, observations about the size, classification, gender, colour, shape, of animals are each scored separately. Again, interpretation involved some assertive affirmation of action or function attached to an objective description, whilst hypothesis covered any questioning or querying of possible function or prediction or postulation of role or outcome from an observation made. Implicit in the latter is a mental weighing of questions or a confidence that the matter could be settled by some test applied. Summed tabulated instances may be cross-compared directly, or, all other things being equal, by their departure from expectation. In the last case, where data sets are compared,  values are calculated. Where significant differences occur between one set of data and another set, i.e. the frequency of occurrence departs from what would be expected by chance alone, the value of p is indicated.

Results

First observation

Initially, the pupils reported for ten minutes on a brine shrimp bottle ecosystem placed in front of them. The number of the ‘conversation’ contributions coming from four children in that time averaged 195 from 4 children in 10 minutes (Results from two sample schools are shown in Table 1). Analysis of the tape transcripts of first observations into discrete categories allocated 379 units to Structure, 344 to Behaviour, 49 to Non-shrimp features and 98 to Science Processes. This amounted to 870 categoric units from 781 contributions. From these results it is clear that there was most talk generated by observing the form (48%) and behaviour (33%) of the animals. Many features of brine shrimp structure were orally described by the children. All groups commented without exception and most of all on the size differences between the animals and differences in their colours. The pupil observers had been told only that the animals in the bottle were ‘brine shrimps’. In conversation, the animals were not further classified, in any taxonomic sense, by any of the children but they were described in a variety of ways. The covering and limbs of the animals were also well observed and the wave-like metachronal beating of the limbs described. All groups also spotted the adult animals’ paired black pin-head-like eyes. The morphology of males and females was picked out as different, but often no gender was ascribed. Animals of anomalous appearance were readily commented upon. Once a term was adopted by the children as a descriptor for a structure they incorporated it into their group’s language immediately. Some discussants clearly struggled with terminology for a while until context and intention was clear. With respect to behaviour, all four groups, without exception, commented most upon the animals’ swimming movements. All groups recognised that the (male-female) pairings might have had reproductive significance, but this was not immediately developed in any interpretative discussion before diary writing began (see below). Some groups suggested the paired shrimps were mating and some used descriptors of male and female correctly; on the other hand two groups came up with the novel explanation that the pairing might be a parent-with-child process of rearing young. Twice, in this context, sea-horses (where males harbour young in a brood pouch) were mentioned and these may have triggered this alternative conceptual framework. Analysis of science process showed that this was largely interpretation with minimal hypothesis making, prediction or experimental suggestion. There was no quantification of observed phenomena from any group on the initial observations.

Results from the Diaries

The eight diaries that were kept by pupils varied considerably in the amount and extent of writing and drawing that was performed. All made at the least a two line entry and at most a page and a half daily. Motivation was high. There were 44 A4 pages of pupil diary written in the first week with a mean diary length of 5 A4 pages per pupil. Analysis was made for each of the 8 diaries. It would be difficult to do justice to the value of these pieces of pupil work other than to quote extensively from them (some illustrative exerts are quoted in the Discussion). Diary-writers seemed to gradually build up confidence in their own interpretations but also debated with themselves extensively, often changing interpretations from one day to the next. Beyond the initial, and very limited, ten minute group observations pupils reported much more fully in their diaries on more complex phenomena such as locomotion, mate-guarding, filter- and bottom-feeding, reproduction, etc. They often made considerable, but by no means entirely correct, interpretations of events. Many events were given what a more experienced observer would dismiss as fanciful interpretations but often there was a clear engaging of relevant learning from other experience and application to the new situation. For example learning from science classes (e.g. on physical forces and respiratory gases), was employed. Insights from sex