Strategies for the development of primary school children's scientific thinking
Joaquim Sá, Child Studies Institute, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
Maria Odete Valente, Department of Education, Faculty of Science, Lisbon, Portugal
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Frankfurt, 24-27 September 1997
Introduction
The present article describes and characterises the methodology and intervention strategies in the classroom that were part of a study intending to promote and evaluate the development of scientific thinking of primary school children (Sá 1996).
This study and the intervention of which it is part, incorporates important contributions to the changes in conceptions and practices of educational research which started in the 1960s and the 1970s with the interpretative research approach. According to Erickson (1989) they are all participant observational research approaches that apply to the study of education, the qualitative and observational methods of socio-linguistic and ethnographic research. These approaches, according to this author, do not exclude the use of quantitative methods of 'process-product’ research (Shulman 1989) taken from the application of quantitative methods in the behaviourist tradition of psychology.
Erickson (1989) considers it fundamental, taking into account the aim of the social sciences and educational research in particular, to establish a distinction between 'behaviour' and 'action'.
An analytical distinction that is crucial for interpretative research is the distinction between behaviour, that is, the physical act, and action, which is the physical behaviour plus the interpretations and meanings the actors construct in the interactions with each other. (Erickson 1989: 214)
The meaning of 'action', here proposed by Erickson, corresponds to Damásio's (1995) perspective as to the 'behaviour' and 'mental' notions of living organisms. This author sustains that there are organisms with behaviour but without cognition. On the other hand, all organisms that possess a mind have deliberated behaviour and action. According to Erickson, it is inferred that the meaning of action corresponds, in Damásio, to mentally guided actions.
Not considering the interpretations and meanings that the actors give to physical objects and varied social agents means ignoring the fundamental difference between the natural and social sciences. Therefore, 'the study object of social interpretative research is the action and not the [observable] behaviour' (Erickson 1989). As far as the meanings elaborated by the subjects assume great relevance, the teaching-learning process under investigation stops being used in a general way in order to focus on the specific content of the matter being learned by the pupils (Shulman 1989).
An important epistemological question concerns the researcher's role. Contrary to the researcher who assumes him/herself as an outside observer to a reality that is made the object of study without interfering in it, in interpretative research the researcher becomes an integral part of the reality being studied in order to get an adequate appropriation of the meanings of the social actors. (Erickson 1989) And, because education problems are practical 'know how' problems (Elliot 1993) in educational research, it is important to act in order to transform an existing situation into a desirable situation (Simon 1981), where action is regulated by a permanent reflexive practice and field result evaluations (Goetz and LeCompt 1988, Elliot 1993, Sá, 1996; Silva 1997; 1999). Research and action are combined in order to increase knowledge and contribution to a change (Touraine 1984).
Thus, the intervention carried out under the scope of this study had research, innovation and skill development objectives (Esteves 1986): a) research because it has in mind the production of knowledge and comprehension about the reality of the class/teacher social community as context of teaching-learning and about the processes of teaching and learning; b) innovation because its objective is also to promote modifications in teachers' practice, pupils' attitudes and behaviour, in other words to transform globally the classroom atmosphere; c) skill development because all the participants, including the researcher, acquire knowledge and competencies as the intervention runs away.
The following questions guided the intervention carried out in two primary school fourth-grade classes:
- Is it possible to teach scientific process skills to 9/10 years old children?
- Are 9/10 years old children able to learn doing investigations?
- Will there be any interaction between the level of scientific process skills and the level of investigation skills?
- Will there be any interaction between the increase on scientific process skills, at the end of a year's intervention, and the increase of logical-verbal reasoning?
- Is it possible to promote the thinking quality of 9/10 years old children within the science teaching-learning context?
Science Teaching and Scientific Thinking
Scientific processes as conceptual development strategy
'Scientific training', referred to in the 1867 report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and understood as 'the knowledge of methods that can be acquired through studying data at first hand under the guidance of a competent science teacher' (Jenkins 1989: 26), appears to be, in light of the literature available, the first time that the question of learning the scientific method as being an integral part of scientific education is brought up. In the beginning of the twentieth century, Dewey argued that familiarity with the scientific method was more important than the contents, especially for those who in the future would not follow scientific professions. In the 1960s, in USA (Science – A Process Approach project) and in UK (Nuffield Project) a curricular movement of teaching science with an emphasis on the scientific processes is begun in the world (Millar and Diver 1987). Around that time the perspective of identifying key ideas to be developed by the children in general, or the selection of areas of scientific experience common to all children, were rejected as being detractors of the emphasis in the process skills attempted (Harlen 1984). The curricula, therefore, established a clear distinction between 'content' and 'process'. The expression 'scientific process' was adopted by those who planned the curriculum as a result of the ideas contained in the USA science project for primary schools, Science: A Process Approach. It proposes school science as a process, contrary to the traditional view of a teaching of science based on the transmission of scientific information (Millar and Driver 1987).
Such approach to scientific education based on processes -- despite the purpose of interpreting the nature of science as human activity -- has been vigorously criticised (Harlen 1984 a-b, Millar and Driver 1987) because it is considered that that perspective presumes that a set of sensorial experiments organised as an algorithmic would give access to knowledge through a purely inductive method. Those authors criticise the implicit idea of a group of processes, viewed as a type of Black Box, that duly manipulated would give access to any and all subjects to an impersonal and universal knowledge.
The need to take into account children's intuitive ideas in science education has been recognised since the 1970s. However research shows that it is not enough for the pupil to be confronted with evidence contradicting his/her ideas and expectations so that new ideas in conformity with the evidence replace intuitive conceptions (Driver et al. 1985, Khun et al. 1988, Osborne and Freyberg 1991, Harlen 1992 a, Sá 1994; 1996). The alternative to teaching through memorisation of scientific facts, principles and laws cannot be the 'offering' of a mountain of evidence absent-minded of a perspective of personal and social construction of knowledge in the classroom.
The 'conceptual change' model that emerged in the 1980s takes as its starting point children's ideas and adopts strategies, which have in mind promoting the acquisition of scientific ideas (Hewson 1981, Posner et al. 1982). This perspective presumes a dichotomy between intuitive conception and the scientific concept and an underlying notion of learning according to which a "discontinuous" jump in the intuitive ideas to the scientific concepts should be promoted. This model has revealed itself unsustainable from the psychological and epistemological points of view, giving way to a learning perspective that welcomes the evolution of children's intuitive ideas to ideas progressively more and more 'scientific', in other words, conforming to a larger range of phenomena (Driver et al.1985, Kuhn et al. 1988, Osborne and Freyberg 1991, Harlen 1992 a, Silva 1997).[1]
In this evolutionary process of conceptual change which requires that children have opportunity to test ideas against evidence -- by manipulating objects, materials and equipment -- the level of 'scientific process' skills has a primordial role (Cavendish et al. 1990, Harlen 1992 a, Sá 1996) as well as an interaction and confrontation of ideas with alternative ideas from other colleagues and scientific ideas (Driver et al. 1985; Tasker and Freyberg 1991).
That’s a new scientific process perspective that places great importance on children's thinking schemas. Process skills are the ability to execute mental operations and physical actions that can be developed with experience (Harlen 1988 a, Fairbrother 1989). In contrast to the notion of scientific process, understood as general skills, its dependency in relation to content and context is acknowledged (Millar and Driver 1987, Brook et al. 1989, Cavendish et al. 1990, Russel and Harlen 1990, Harlen 1992 a).
In the use of ideas and their change as experience broadens, the scientific process skills fulfil a fundamental role... These skills are used in the process of applying existing ideas to a new experience, forming hypotheses, and submitting predictions to the evidence test. But if they are not rigorously and scientifically used then the adopted ideas do not necessarily adjust themselves to the evidence. Ideas that should be rejected could be accepted and vice-versa. Therefore, the development of ideas depends very much on the process skills level development. (Harlen 1992b: 493)
However, since it is true that the quality of the new ideas depends on the level of scientific process skills, it is also true that the level of scientific process skills when approaching new evidence depends on the previous knowledge (Harlen 1983, Brook et al. 1989, Qualter et al. 1990, Sá 1994). In a study carried out by the author (Sá 1994) in a third grade classroom (ages 8-9) in one of the five groups the candle flame blew out faster in the larger of two flasks. This 'abnormal' result was the object of special attention and reflection. After repetition, and discussion some pupils suggested that this result could be explained by the fact that the wick and flame from the candle in the large flask were also larger. This hypothesis was tested and confirmed. In this case, one can say that the scientific processes produced the knowledge that a flame extinguishes when inside a flask and that the length of time it stays lit depends on the size of the flask because 'the flame is like people, it needs pure air'. Nevertheless as new evidence, unexplainable in light of previous knowledge, it demanded an improvement at the level of the use of scientific processes, resulting in increased knowledge and comprehension of the factors that influence the duration of the flame inside the flask. This situation is particularly enlightening to conclude that
Scientific process, on the one hand, and knowledge and comprehension, on the other, mutually empower each other in an interdependence that produces greater levels in scientific process skills and greater levels of knowledge and comprehension (Sá 1994: 47)
Scientific Processes, Investigation and Scientific Thinking
The process approach of the 1960s and 70s, as well as different authors' perspectives (Funk et al. 1982, Talton et al. 1987) have been criticised for favouring an excessive fragmentation of scientific activity in a set of particular process skills. Several authors (Millar and Driver 1987, Woolnough 1989, Fairbrother 1989, Wallington 1989, Qualter et al. 1990, Harlen 1992, Sá 1994) sustain that the intention of promoting science education through training of particular scientific processes violates the nature of scientific activity. Investigation competencies cannot be achieved as a product of the integration of particular processes previously trained (Millar and Driver 1987, Woolnough 1989). And, on the other hand, the attempt to train scientific processes separately leads to exercises lacking personal significance for children (Sá 1994, 1996). According to Harlen (1988b), the perspective of teaching science in the 1960s and 1970s, based on scientific processes understood as skills disassociated from the development of the pupils' ideas and concepts, gave way to greater physical activity and lesser mental activity in the classroom.
The nature of scientific activities suggests a holistic approach (Qualter et al. 1990) in which the particular scientific processes make sense and should be trained as an integral part of investigation.[2] Similarly, Harlen (1992a) sustains that scientific activity should be seen as a whole, but that it is convenient to analyse the complex whole for a better understanding of what investigation is. Hence, Harlen affirms that when
We want to promote the observation skill, or the skill to identify variables, we should do it not by providing specific exercises on such process skills but using observation and looking for variables as part of investigation. (Harlen 1978: 621)
The programmes on learning to think (Valente et al. 1987 and 1991, Maclure and Davies 1994) have inspired studies on the development of thinking skills within the context of the sciences (Arons 1981, Garrett 1986, Khun et al. 1988, Cruz 1989, Lobo, 1989; Strang and Shayer 1993, Adey 1994, Neto and Valente 1997; Valente 1997). The perspective of development of thinking skills within a curriculum context is justified because:
- The act of thinking is related, in a particularly straightforward way, to the specific fields of knowledge, not making sense its teaching and learning outside any body of contents;
- When confronted with unknown situations, the learner always tries to interpret them and think about them by resorting to the known which then justifies the teaching of thinking skills in specific contexts, familiar to the learner. (Valente et al. 1987b: 12)
Promoting thinking skills within the curricular matters consists in designing strategies that can transform the teaching of regular academic courses in such a way that they focus on thinking and reinforce pupils' intellectual abilities. Such strategies imply radical changes in the way to approach the subject matter and the role required of the student; teaching methods deliberately try to improve the quality of reasoning and develop analytical skills and problem solving. (Valente et al. 1987, Maclure 1994).