How Teachers Respond to Student Problematizations to Facilitate Productive Science Knowledge Building

• In Event: 69.019 - Examining Uncertainty as a Construct for Promoting Meaningful Scientific Engagement

Abstract

For students to meaningfully engage in science practices, they must learn to direct their own knowledge-building inquiry. To do so, students must identify what they do not know—to be able to “reflect on […] where uncertainties lie, and how these uncertainties can be translated into problems to solve” (Ford 2015, p. 1047). How do students learn to deal with uncertainties in ways that allow them to make intellectual progress? To begin to answer this question, I examine how teachers respond to students’ expressions of uncertainty in the midst of inquiry, and whether/how students took up those or other strategies over time.

To do this, I analyze video data collected from 6th-8th grade science classrooms at “Mountain View” school, whose three veteran science teachers each have over a decade of experience engaging students in science knowledge building practices. I selected episodes for analysis by looking for moments of productive core idea problematization: moments when a student problematized another’s idea, which led to uncertainty about a central claim and further refinement of their explanatory model. After selecting these moments, I characterized strategies of teacher facilitation across the episodes. I present a typology of strategies across all three teachers and years in the full paper. Here, I present a finer-grained analysis of an episode from a 6th grade classroom that demonstrates one facilitation strategy—helping students to revisit and clarify thinking—that students took up over the next two years.

In this episode, Achmed presented his model for what air inside a sealed flask looked like after some air had been removed (Figure 1), saying that there were fewer air molecules in it, but also that there would be “more molecules” in the space between the molecules. Courtney problematized these ideas, saying that if there were more molecules, then there couldn’t also be fewer. Achmed responded by hesitantly changing his idea: “[pause] I guess there’s nothing. [pause] Air molecules can only be so small. Like, I guess there’s nothing really in between them.”

In response to his displays of uncertainty, Ms. L pointed out another area of Achmed’s model where it looked like there might be nothing: “So like I was thinking, I don’t know if this will help answer your question, like over here [red oval in Fig. 1]. What is, I noticed that too, you have stuff here [blue oval]. What’s over here [red oval]?”

Achmed responded, “I guess… [pause] I guess nothing’s really over there.” Ms. L then prompted him again, asking, “So what does that mean?” Achmed reiterated: “I don’t think there’s anything else in between them.” Achmed then continued to defend this claim as the classroom debate about it grew increasingly heated.

Ms. L’s facilitation strategy helped Achmed examine his own uncertainty about what was in between the particles. This enabled him to refine—and own—his claim. Future analyses will identify additional strategies that teachers use to support students in addressing uncertainty.

Author

• Christina R. Krist, University of Maryland - College Park