Expanding the Study of Productive Disciplinary Engagement to a High School Biology Classroom

• In Event: 14.014 - A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation About Productive Disciplinary Engagement

Abstract

Our work aims to expand the focus on productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) in biology classrooms (Engle and Conant , 2002) by building on literature in the history and philosophy of science. We focus on two key disciplinary practices, modeling and argumentation. Biology is a complex field that differs in important ways from experimental sciences such as physics where mathematical models are the norm. Although subfields in biology (e.g., genetics) have benefited from mathematical models, other subfields such as ecology are less amenable to those kinds of simplified models. Passmore and Svoboda (2012) have proposed that almost all of the practices of modeling involve argumentation: from posing a research question to evaluating competing models.
This study’s goal is to describe how 25 students enrolled in a high school evolutionary biology classroom engaged in a peer review of competing models embedded in simulated grant proposals. The grant proposals, designed by seven groups of students, were created to collect evidence on a genuine dilemma in evolutionary biology: What are the selective advantages and disadvantages of bright coloration in male ring-necked pheasants? This dilemma starts with the paradox that colorful plumage might be more attractive to mates, despite its possible salience to predators. The students’ grant proposals incorporated a range of studies (from naturalistic field investigations to experimental studies of artificial selection). Their classmates and the teacher acted as peer reviewers to approximate a common disciplinary practice for scientists.
Our dataset consists of videotapes collected during an elective course (Model-based Understanding in Science Education, MUSE) (Passmore & Stewart, 2002). Our analyses of the transcripts of classroom discourse from the last two lessons in the 9 week course were aimed at identifying the nature of student engagement in modeling and argumentation and the content of their models of selective mating, avoidance of predators, and inheritance of traits.
We found that almost all of the students (96%) participated at least minimally by helping their group present their grant proposal. A large subgroup of students (44%) was highly engaged in the disciplinary practices of modeling and argumentation (e.g., articulating a position and critiquing an alternative position). We also found that students used their own models as the basis for their critiques of their classmates’ grant proposals. Students questioned their peers’ plans for study design and data collection similar to critiques in authentic peer reviews.
As science educators attempt to include the practices of scientists in their instruction, the PDE framework provides guidelines for teachers. Nevertheless, few high school classrooms are able to accomplish the form of ambitious practice as was achieved in the MUSE classroom we studied. Descriptions of classrooms that foster students’ modeling and argumentation are needed in order to better understand what is possible at different grade levels and in different scientific fields. Using the history and philosophy of science to help us better articulate the core disciplinary practices in the sciences as they play out in actual classrooms will be the basis of our contribution to the discussion of PDE in this symposium.

Author

• Ellice A. Forman, University of Pittsburgh