SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE

Science & Technology Education LibraryVOLUME 25

SERIES EDITORWilliam W. Cobern, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA

FOUNDING EDITORKen Tobin, City University of New York, N.Y., USA

EDITORIAL BOARDHenry Brown-Acquay, University College of Education of Winneba, GhanaMariona Espinet, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, SpainGurol Irzik, Bogazici University, Istanbul, TurkeyOlugbemiro Jegede, The Open University, Hong KongLilia Reyes Herrera, Universidad Autónoma de Colombia, Bogota, ColombiaMarrisa Rollnick, College of Science, Johannesburg, South AfricaSvein Sjøberg, University of Oslo, NorwayHsiao-lin Tuan, National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan

SCOPEThe book series Science & Technology Education Library provides a publication forumfor scholarship in science and technology education. It aims to publish innovative bookswhich are at the forefront of the field. Monographs as well as collections of papers willbe published.

The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ix

Lawrence B. Flick Oregon State University Norman G. Lederman Illinois Institute of Technology

1. SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY AND SCIENCE TEACHING 1

Rodger W. Bybee Biological Sciences Curriculum Study

Part I: Historical and Contemporary Educational Contexts 15

2. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON INQUIRY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS

17

George E. DeBoer American Association for the Advancement of Science, Project 2061

3. THE SPECIAL ROLE OF SCIENCE TEACHING IN SCHOOLS SERVING DIVERSE CHILDREN IN URBAN POVERTY

37

Martin Haberman University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

4. ADDRESSING DISABILITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF INQUIRY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE INSTRUCTION

55

Judith Sweeney Lederman Illinois Institute of Technology Greg P. Stefanich University of Northern Iowa

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

5. USING TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT INQUIRY IN MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE

75

Ann M. Novak Greenhills School, Ann Arbor, MI Joseph S. Krajcik University of Michigan

Part II: Teaching and Learning Scientific Inquiry 103

6. THE KNOWLEDGE BUILDING ENTERPRISES IN SCIENCE AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSROOMS

105

Kathleen E. Metz University of California, Berkeley

7. COMMUNITY, CULTURE, AND CONVERSATION IN INQUIRY BASED SCIENCE INSTRUCTION

131

Shirley J. Magnusson, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar University of Michigan Mark Templin University of Toledo

8. DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY IN SECONDARY STUDENTS 157

Lawrence B. Flick Oregon State University

9. INQUIRY IN SCIENCE TEACHER EDUCATION 173

Sandra K. Abell University of Missouri, Columbia Deborah C. Smith Woodcreek Magnet School for Math, Science, and Technology, Lansing, MO Mark J. Volkmann University of Missouri, Columbia

vii

10. A BALANCED APPROACH TO SCIENCE INQUIRY TEACHING

201

William G. Holliday University of Maryland

Part III: Curriculum and Assessment 219

11. ON THE CONTENT OF TASK-STRUCTURED SCIENCE CURRICULA

221

Bruce Sherin Daniel Edelson Matthew Brown Northwestern University

12. ENVISIONING A CURRICULUM OF INQUIRY IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

249

Sandra K. Abell University of Missouri, Columbia James T. McDonald Central Michigan University

13. CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN SCIENCE THROUGH INQUIRY

263

Edith Gummer Oregon State University Audrey Champagne State University of New York Albany

Part IV: Teaching and Learning About Nature of Science 299

14. SYNTAX OF NATURE OF SCIENCE WITHIN INQUIRY AND SCIENCE INSTRUCTION

301

Norman G. Lederman Illinois Institute of Technology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

15. RELATING HISTORY OF SCIENCE TO LEARNING AND TEACHING SCIENCE: USING AND ABUSING

319

Richard A. Duschl Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey

16. AUTHENTIC SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY AS CONTEXT FOR TEACHING NATURE OF SCIENCE: IDENTIFYING CRITICAL ELEMENTS FOR SUCCESS

331

Reneé S. Schwartz Western Michigan University Barbara A. Crawford Cornell University

17. INQUIRY LEARNING IN COLLEGE CLASSROOMS: FOR THE TIMES, THEY ARE, A CHANGING

357

Harry L. Shipman University of Delaware

18. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN: COLLEGE STUDENTS’ VIEWS OF NATURE OF SCIENCE

389

Fouad Abd-El-Khalick University of Illinois

19. PERUSING PANDORA’S BOX: EXPLORING THE WHAT, WHEN, AND HOW OF NATURE OF SCIENCE INSTRUCTION

427

Randy L. Bell University of Virginia

INDEX 447

ABOUT THE EDITORS

453

ix L.B. Flick and N.G. Lederman (eds.) Scientific Inquiry and Nature of Science, ix-xviii.

LAWRENCE B. FLICK & NORMAN G. LEDERMAN

INTRODUCTION A renewed stress on scientific inquiry and nature of science are what distinguish

current reform documents in science education from previous efforts. Unfortunately, classroom teachers, as well as teacher educators, remain uncertain about the specific attributes of scientific inquiry and nature of science, let alone their integration into current science instruction and curricula. Although intimately related, scientific inquiry and nature of science are different constructs. The purpose of this text is to help clarify both the theoretical and practical aspects of inquiry and nature of science as well as provide some guidance relative to their inclusion in science teaching, teacher education, and research. Consequently, the text contains chapters that are dedicated solely to inquiry, solely to nature of science, and to the interaction of inquiry and nature of science. To introduce these two complex ideas, we use the term inquiry, and variously the terms learning (teaching) about inquiry and learning(teaching) about science in our discussion of the nature of science.

Not since the introduction of the term “hands-on” into science education have teachers and scholars in the field been so dominated by a single concept. The concept capturing the imagination of so many people is, inquiry. The contemporary stimulus prompting the use of the term in popular and scholarly discourse was the publication of the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996). Publication of this document was part of a larger movement to generate national standards for science subject matter, science teaching, and assessment, among other concerns. But as ubiquitous as the standards movement has become, it can not be the only or, perhaps, even the main reason that the term inquiry has captured so much attention. With so much being written on the subject of teaching science as inquiry, there is always the tendency for the quantity of discourse to dilute the meaning of key terms. As usage flows between popular and professional literature, concepts are applied in an increasing number of settings and to increasingly diverse instances. It is important for a profession to periodically take a reading on the directions major ideas have been taken. This book examines inquiry and nature of science, two major and interrelated foci of the reforms in science education. The first concept is inquiry. The term has taken on three different meanings in the context of the National Science Education Standards. Inquiry stands for a fundamental principle of how modern science is conducted. Inquiry refers to a variety of processes and ways of thinking that support the development of new knowledge in science. In addition to the doing of science, inquiry also refers to knowledge about the processes scientists use to develop knowledge, that is the nature of science itself. Thus, inquiry is viewed as two different student outcomes, ability to do scientific processes and knowledge about these processes. Finally, inquiry is viewed as a teaching approach

© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

x LAWRENCE B. FLICK & NORMAN G. LEDERMAN

that can be used to teach students the traditional subject matter of the sciences. The logic here is that students will best learn science if they learn using a reasonable facsimile of the processes scientists follow. Closely related to inquiry is nature of science, a term that has created as much confusion as inquiry. As a consequence of the conventions of what is considered acceptable scientific inquiry, as well as the fact that inquiry is performed by humans, the knowledge produced necessarily has certain characteristics that limit and delimit its applications and ontological status.

The National Science Education Standards used the term inquiry as the label for a core principle of science. Simply stated that principle is that knowledge about the world derives from human efforts to systematically gather and interpret observations that become evidence for or against explanations and theory through collaboration, discussion, and debate. This general principle implies that scientific knowledge about the world is subject to the interpretation and reinterpretation of a body of evidence in a fluid environment of scientific ideas and theory. Schwab (1962) in analyzing the nature of science contrasted “stable enquiry”, were scientific principles define problems, with “fluid enquiry”, where principles are treated as problems themselves. This contrast highlights two complementary activities of science, constructing bodies of evidence related to existing theory and constructing new theory. The principle of disciplined inquiry is at the center of both forms of investigation. On the basis of this central principle the National Science Education Standards made “teaching science as inquiry” a core principle for science education.

When translated into classroom curriculum, instruction, and assessment, teaching science as inquiry and teaching about the nature of science have resonated with core principles in teaching science. These core principles derive from work on understanding the nature of student thinking in complex tasks such as those required by inquiry-oriented tasks. Throughout the last century the principle that science should be taught “from the beginning…studied (though not exclusively) by direct contact with the environment” (United States Bureau of Education, 1893) has received periodic reinforcement. However understanding the cognitive demands of complex tasks, such as posing and investigating problems in science classrooms, has developed more recently. Educational research examining the skills of expert learners involved with complex tasks resonates closely with teaching science as inquiry.

Teaching scientific inquiry and teaching about the nature of scientific inquiry means finding ways for engaging students in investigative activity and also teaching appropriate ways of thinking that support development of meaning. Active student involvement that prompts the use of relevant intellectual skills goes to the core of what teachers strive to do in any subject. Educators have long been interested in a better understanding of how to stimulate student thought. Teaching science as inquiry poses a particularly important and difficult instance of this goal. Addressing scientific problems through inquiry requires that students link a scientific purpose with scientific procedures that lead to a conclusion supported by reasoned argument (Reiser et al. 2001). The cognitive skills needed for this kind of task are beyond what most students are capable of doing without direct teacher involvement. Understanding how to support student development and use of relevant cognitive

INTRODUCTION xi

skills is a broad area of research by cognitive and educational psychologists as well as science educators that is relevant to teaching science as inquiry.

Forming and maintaining a sense of scientific purpose in the process of designing and/or engaging in investigative activity, requires a reflective state of mind. The nature of complex tasks, such as inquiry, require the learner to track their own progress, use of cognitive resources, and awareness of when error checking or correction is needed. Reflection is also required for students to understand the nature of the scientific work they are engaged in, in other words the nature of science itself. Educators and scholars over recent decades have become increasingly interested in metacognitive capabilities that support learners in this kind of complex task. Prominent areas of work have included studying from texts, expository writing, and scientific reasoning (Brown et al., 1983). Indeed, it is this alternation of doing and reflecting that provides students with opportunities to develop their inquiry skills as well as an understanding about what they have done. In the language of the standards, students will learn to do inquiry as well as learn about inquiry, or about the nature of science itself.

Early work in teaching science as inquiry (see Welch, 1981; Harms & Yager, 1980) was not successful. Specifically, low achieving students seemed to be further disadvantaged by instruction focusing on inquiry. Hope for improvement of this situation comes from important advances in knowledge about the kinds of cognitive skill and knowledge needed for inquiry-type tasks and how to scaffold student thinking. The premises underlying recent efforts to teach scientific inquiry are derived from research suggesting that with appropriate instructional scaffolding, students can learn cognitive skills for learning how to learn. By extension, students can be guided in developing the metacognitive skills necessary for following the course of investigating a scientific problem. In the process of pursuing investigations, students can also develop knowledge of science and knowledge about science. These advances are accomplished by explicit teaching of cognitive and metacognitive processes in the context of learning science and participating in investigations. Explicit approaches to teaching these skills particularly benefit low-achieving and/or disadvantaged students (White & Frederickson, 1998).

As students gain skills for conducting an investigation, they can also be guided to consider how the scientific enterprise functions from a larger perspective. A metacognitive awareness necessary for guiding and shaping procedures and constraining the relationship between data and conclusions, can be extended to consider the context within which the work takes place. Science does not operate outside of the influences of culture, politics, and society. As the student’s world grows so should their understanding of how science, its people and ideas, fit into it. It is only at this level of thought about science and scientific knowledge that students reach the full intent of science education envisioned by current reformers. It is one thing to be able to focus on a scientific question, for example where does salt go when dissolved in water, and quite another to recognize that question as part of a much larger process of building scientific knowledge.

Recognizing the nature of inquiry as disciplined observation and interpretation under the constraints of a stated problem is a major accomplishment. Recognizing that inquiry is a way of thinking and a way of knowing encompassing the work of

xii LAWRENCE B. FLICK & NORMAN G. LEDERMAN

scientists over hundreds of years is a second major accomplishment. We must not underestimate the scale of these two achievements. The framers of a new science education want to broaden the way students see the world to include a scientific perspective. A favorite story in science is an analogy suggesting the scale of this change in thinking. We picture Newton pondering the scientific problems of force and motion. A round apple, reminiscent of the moon hanging in the sky, falls from a tree and strikes him on the head triggering an insight. The forces operating on earth also operate on the scale of the heavens (Bronowski, 1973, p. 222). Science and our perception of the world is forever changed. This is the goal we have for students. The nature of scientific work as investigative processes, bookish knowledge, and discipline is limited, it involves much more. It is creativity always influenced by the culture, politics, and social values of the time. Jacob Bronowski was an acute observer of the development of science and the interplay among ideas and people and culture. His thoughts on the practice of science are the stuff that breathe life into abstract principles and disciplined procedures. “Every theory is based on some analogy, and sooner or later the theory fails because the analogy turns out to be false. A theory in its day helps to solve the problems of the day” (p. 140). Historical precursors to modern scientific work, alchemy and astrology, were attempts to use human life as an analogy for how the world works. This turns out to be a false analogy. But like the early thinkers that pre-date modern science, our students themselves are stargazers and fascinated by transforming materials.

The focus on inquiry as critical to the development of scientific literacy provides students within a framework within which they can better understand the nature and limitations of the knowledge produced as part of the scientific body of knowledge. Such understandings are critical, especially when we quickly come to realize that it is unreasonable to assume that our citizenry will make decisions about scientifically and technologically-based issues by running to the garage to conduct authentic investigations. More realistically, experiences with inquiry provide our students (and citizens) with foundational experiences from which they can reflect on the nature and limits of scientific knowledge and claims. It is based upon this knowledge that the general citizenry will derive meaning and research conclusions concerning knowledge claims. This is the value of nature of science. There are numerous lists and definitions that one can find related to nature of science. However, the empirical literature and the National Science Education Standards typically use the phrase to refer to the characteristics of the knowledge as directly derived from how the knowledge is produced. That is, the nature of scientific inquiry has implications for the knowledge produced. Again, although disagreements exist among philosophers, scientists, and educators there is virtually no disagreement that scientific knowledge is a) subject to change (tentative); b) partly derived from human imagination, creativity and imagination; c) necessarily derived from a combination of observation and inference; d) embedded within a social and cultural context; and e) at least partially derived from the empirical world.

It is critical for us to do more than avoid debates about nature of science by rising to a level of generality where disagreements do not exist. As educators, it is absolutely critical that we carefully consider what aspects of nature of science are accessible to school-aged students and what aspects make sense for all students to

INTRODUCTION xiii

know. It is not, for example, fruitful to insist that middle school students should come to understand that there are no observations, but really only inferences.

Clearly, scientific inquiry and nature of science are the foundations of current conceptions of what it means to be scientifically literate. Clearly, promoting students’ understandings of these complex and abstract ideas and processes require types of teaching, learning, and assessment much different from what has been typically observed in our classrooms over the past century. The authors presented in this text have attempted to address, from varied perspectives, the educational issues surrounding attention to inquiry and nature of science in our K-12 classrooms, as well as teacher education.

Organization of the Book

Bybee has, perhaps, influenced the inclusion of inquiry and nature of science in the science curriculum at the policy level more than any science educator. His chapter sets a concrete foundation for the text by clearly defining the different perspectives on the meaning of inquiry and its relationship to nature of science within teaching and curriculum. Further, he does an excellent job of clarifying the importance of inquiry and nature of science to science teaching and learning, and the role of science curriculum in the current socio-cultural climate. The implications provided with respect to teacher education clearly follow. Overall, this chapter provides an lens through which to view the more specific perspectives of the following chapters.

Part I examines three educational contexts that pose significant challenges to reforming science and mathematics teaching. In order to understand the broad implications of teaching inquiry and the nature of science to the broadest possible population of students, DeBoer sets an historical foundation for the book. In particular, he provides an analysis of the history of scientific inquiry as a goal of science education. Specific attention is given to the varying rationales for the inquiry approach within curriculum with respect to current day socio-historical perspectives. One completes this chapter with a clear understanding that the inclusion of inquiry and nature of science has been advocated for a long period of time and the rationale has not always been limited to the value of these topics to an understanding of science.

Haberman examines teaching children of poverty in urban settings. These environments pose some of the most difficult educational environments in our system. For the teachers that not only survive in these environments but help students thrive, Haberman describes how they address three of the central questions of in our field: What knowledge is of most worth? How does learning best occur? and What is the purpose of learning? Teaching science and inquiry, in the hands of skilled teachers, can play an important role in promoting real thinking and real learning in the toughest of schools.

Lederman and Stefanich take an extremely innovative approach to their discussion of traditional issues related to inclusive instruction. Their discussion provides an excellent primer for those not well-versed in the literature on inclusive

xiv LAWRENCE B. FLICK & NORMAN G. LEDERMAN

instructional approach focused on inquiry and nature of science is quite consistent with what the literature on inclusive science instruction has been recommending for years. Additionally, the authors provide an innovative perspective in their description of how the experiences of students with disabilities can be used to enhance inquiry-oriented and nature of science instruction for all students.

Novak and Krajcik provide a tour de force of learning technologies and their potential to impact student understanding of science through inquiry. Emphasis is placed on technologies as a cognitive tools that, in concert with the teacher, provide a variety of scaffolding for student inquiry. They present examples of learning technologies whose features support the development of integrated understandings through access to a wide variety of information, capabilities for multiple forms of representation, and channels of communication that break the barriers of typical classrooms. Each category of technology is discussed in the context of research critically examining of the role technology can play in science teaching and learning. Across the breadth of this chapter, the reader gains a sense of future technological innovation through tantalizing examples of the integration of technologies. Computer probes, hand-held computers, and web resources connect students to the environment, students to experts, students to each other.

In Part II, authors take readers through issues in teaching and learning scientific inquiry from the elementary grades to teacher education. Metz begins with the obvious that the work of professional scientists and children learning science in elementary classrooms is fundamentally different. However, she raises a central, penetrating question of how problematic are these differences for leading children to understand science as inquiry? By examining the goal structures of scientific work and of exemplary elementary curricula, she challenges readers to re-examine the capabilities of children and the intended goals of elementary science. Contrary to the design of most curricula in the US, Metz argues that it is possible for less to become more if we “understand the nature of scientists’ knowledge and how they use it.” Finally, drawing on recent research in classrooms, she challenges elementary science educators to recognize the fundamental role of discourse in examining competing ideas in science and to scaffold student engagement in such discourse as a central task of science learning.

Magnusson, Palincsar, and Templin present an argument for the central importance of communication within and among scientific communities. They apply the central tenets of this argument to heuristic for guided inquiry in elementary classrooms. The chapter uses data from classroom students to illustrate how their heuristic can be used by teachers to encourage use of and advance student skills in classroom conversation that transitions into scientific discourse. A key feature of the basic argument instantiated in the heuristic is that scientists operate in two arenas of discourse. In “workbench” science, scientists engage in informal communication and argument along with creative speculations. In formal publication, scientists must respect formal modes of presentation and argument. The guided discovery heuristic helps teachers structure classrooms as a scientific community.

Prescriptions for teaching science in high school has a long history of emphasizing lab work and viewing science as part of real world experiences. In

instruction, but then takes matters several steps further by clearly showing how an

INTRODUCTION xv

highlights the more contemporary view that to accomplish an understanding and use of inquiry, teachers are charged with teaching and supporting the use of appropriate cognitive skills. This is a radical shift in teaching responsibilities for many teachers. Flick outlines the complementary nature of research in cognitive and developmental psychology and research in science classrooms both emphasizing the importance of cognitive supports for engaging in challenging, inquiry tasks. The chapter includes discussion by teachers of their efforts to incorporate inquiry in their classrooms based on a year-long professional development program.

Abell, Smith, and Volkman examine the roles of teacher educators as they present scientific inquiry in university courses. To do this, they lead us through three different contexts where teachers or pre-service teachers are learning about the nature of science inquiry. The contexts are (a) a physics content course specifically designed for pre-service elementary education majors, (b) an undergraduate elementary science methods course “Teaching Subject Matter to Diverse Learners”, and (c) a graduate level methods course for practicing teachers at various levels. The analysis describes a variety of roles for science teacher educators that include the teacher who pushes students to generate evidence-based arguments, who “tells” scientific explanations, who scaffolds instruction for inquiry, and who assesses and evaluates student learning. Each of these create a different kind of instructional tension that challenges both instructors and students.

Holliday confronts a long-standing issue related to the broad interpretation of inquiry teaching in science, the issue of explicit versus implicit teaching practices as they apply to inquiry-related instruction. While recognizing that science teaching in general and inquiry in particular require varied forms of teaching, many authors have, perhaps unintentionally, given the impression that inquiry implies an implicit or indirect approach with students. Holliday prompts us to consider the instructional challenges of delivering the content and spirit of scientific inquiry to all students.

Part III takes up the design of curriculum that fosters students opportunity to learn inquiry and the design of assessment tasks the provide students opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge of inquiry. Sherin, Edelson, and Brown present a novel approach to analyzing curriculum that is highly relevant to the design of inquiry-oriented materials. Task-structured curricular designs are contrasted with content-structured designs. The analysis specifically highlights structural differences that compare discipline structure with problem-centered structures. Sherin and colleagues deepen the analysis by noting that some curricula, such as prior-conceptions-driven models, map out both target concepts and pathways that students may traverse while achieving intended understanding. It may be more difficult for task-structured curricula to provide an account of student learning than content-structured curricula. That having been said, they examine empirical and theoretical sides of the question of whether task-structured curricula can achieve their learning goals.

Elementary classrooms have been a perennial challenge to the establishment of a consistent and sound science curriculum. Abell and McDonald explore the operation of inquiry-oriented science in two elementary classrooms and conjecture that an inquiry-based science curriculum could be a model of reform-minded, inquiry-based

sketching some of these historical antecedents to teaching science as inquiry, Flick

xvi LAWRENCE B. FLICK & NORMAN G. LEDERMAN

of elementary science that avoids both activity-driven curricula that emphasizes the action over content and text-driven curricula the emphasizes passive reading of content over meaningful activity. Their integrated vision is elaborated through two descriptions of classroom instruction one based on fourth-grade, teacher-developed curriculum and another based on a fifth-grade, published curriculum from the National Science Resources Center.

Champagne and Gummer focus on the challenges faced by classroom teachers as they work to provide student opportunity to learn what is intended by state implementations of national standards. Specifically they focus on understandings about the nature of scientific inquiry and how those understandings are communicated to teachers through school system documents. If teachers are charged with structuring opportunities to learn for students, then how clear and coherent is the language of these documents and how well aligned are state tests with the stated content? They take us through an in-depth analysis of the New York State documents describing the Standards for Science and Science Inquiry and develop the contrasting images of scientific inquiry they present to teachers.

The educational challenges of teaching and learning about the nature of science is the focus of Part IV. In his introductory chapter, Lederman provides a concrete foundation for the perspectives on nature of science evident in national reforms and the empirical research on the topic. Upon completion of the chapter the reader should be clear on the often misunderstood distinction between nature of science and scientific inquiry as well as be cognizant of the numerous overlaps. The major thrust of the chapter is to provide readers with an organizational template for the successful integration of nature of science into current curriculum and classroom instruction.

Richard Duschl is perhaps the most influential contemporary science educator for promoting the importance of nature of science and the use of history of science to teach to that end. Duschl does an excellent job of reviewing the relationship between history of science and nature of science instructional outcomes. Importantly, he discusses both the effective use of history as well as the abuse of history as a venue for teaching nature of science. Few would argue that history of science could not be a fruitful way to promote student understandings of nature of science. However, Duschl makes it quite clear that inclusion of history of science is not a universal panacea, but rather it can be abused just as any other curriculum focus.

The value of students’ experiences with authentic scientific inquiry as a means to promote understandings of nature of science is the focus of this “cutting edge” chapter by Schwartz and Crawford. Over the years, most educators have accepted, untested, the claim that students come to understand nature of science naturally through experiences with inquiry. Hence, the popularity of providing both teachers and students with experiences working with active scientists. In what probably represents one of the few contemporary reviews of research on the assumed value of research experiences, Schwartz and Crawford clarify what the research actually says and they also provide clear guidance on how such experiences can be useful.

Shipman is one of handful of science professors that have consistently made an

curriculum and instruction across elementary school subjects. They argue for a view

INTRODUCTION xvii

while they are learning college level astronomy. He does an excellent job of describing the “history” of college level science instruction and how, in recent years, there has been a shift in instructional approach. Shipman is quite realistic in his discussion and does not recommend an overnight and total reorganization of college level instruction. Rather, his well-crafted discussion and instructional examples carefully considers the logistical constraints of college level instruction which make it quite a different matter than what is possible in K-12 instruction.

As an companion to Shipman’s chapter, Abd-El-Khalick reviews the literature of college students’ understandings of nature of science. He brings the most recent research to bear in his discussion of what is known, what is assumed, and what can be done to alleviate the perceived problems. In ever case, what is provided to the reader is thoroughly supported by current research. Although one would expect research support for recommendations to be the norm, the literature on nature of science and scientific inquiry is replete with unsubstantiated recommendations.

Bell probes the various aspects of nature of science as advocated throughout the literature on the topic and then grapples with the hard questions of developmental appropriateness. Teachers often are concerned about how capable their students are of understanding some of the abstract ideas labeled as nature of science. Bell provides incisive, research-based guidance on teaching nature of science and what is possible to teach younger students. He makes a strong argument for the possibility of teaching most nature of science aspects to students often thought of as too young for such curriculum topics.

How to Use the Book

The purpose of this book is to help clarify both the theoretical and practical aspects of inquiry and nature of science as well as provide some guidance relative to their inclusion in science teaching, teacher education, and research. Certainly the authors do not share a common point of view and the increased clarity we seek does not imply a simplification of these complex constructs. But discussion and debate that should follow from reading these chapters will stimulate deeper understanding. Researchers will find the contributions to theory offered by the authors to be valuable for framing studies to examine the two central constructs of the book in finer detail. In this sense the book will be useful as a scholarly resource and for readings in graduate courses. The careful examination of issues of practice offer new approaches and insights to science educators who work with teachers in their courses and in the field. Selected chapters will provide a foundational resource for teachers in workshops and in-service programs conducted by science specialists in districts or state departments of education. Ultimately it is our hope that the book as a whole will support clearer thinking about and reflection on inquiry and the nature of science as it applies to student learning.

effort to promote students’ understanding of nature of science and scientific inquiry

xviii LAWRENCE B. FLICK & NORMAN G. LEDERMAN

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