Promoting Creative Reasoning to Engage Students in Learning Science

• In Event: 30.081 - Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: 30.081-8 - Science Teaching and Learning SIG Poster Session

Abstract

We note that the well-established frameworks for student claim-judging in school science are not matched by accounts of creative reasoning in claim-building. We develop an exploratory framework to characterise and enact this reasoning to enhance engagement. We apply this framework to interpret lessons by two science teachers where they aimed to develop students’ reasoning capabilities to support learning. We found that (a) the teachers were able to elicit students’ inquisitive, imaginative and collaborative responses, depending on the set tasks, lesson sequence, and student roles, (b) the students reported that they found these tasks engaging, and (c) our framework provides some generative leads in how teachers can enhance students’ interest and capabilities in claim-making through multi-modal reasoning.

Authors

• Bruce G. Waldrip, University of Tasmania

• Vaughan Prain, La Trobe University