Broadening the Selection of School Science Texts: An Exploration of Firsthand Accounts of Scientific Discovery

• In Event: Roundtable Session 55
  In Roundtable Session: Research on the Nature of Texts for Literacy Development

Abstract

New K-12 standards for STEM-related literacy practices and processes have emphasized the need for students to engage in complex and varied scientific texts (e.g., biographies of scientists). This study is a closer view of the unique benefits one type of text, the Scientific Discovery Narrative (SDN), which was found to be beneficial for middle school readers (Author, 2012). Why did the participant readers, particularly cultural minorities, learn and remember more conceptual information from reading an SDN rather than a conceptually comparable, non-SDN version? Findings from parallel analyses of primary texts and interviews (N=24) suggested that SDNs support a perceived active membership with a scientific community that in turn fostered an invested interest to learn more about the targeted conceptual information.

Author

• Diana J. Arya, University of California - Santa Barbara