Supporting Evidence Construction in Elementary School Science Investigations

• In Event: 34.037 - Using Epistemic Tools to Support Reasoning, Student Agency, and Equity

Abstract

Objectives
While scientific activity is driven by the need to manage uncertainty, elementary students usually engage in tightly controlled procedures, limiting their participation in evidence construction. Moving past traditional investigations requires new conceptualizations of experimentation, curricular approaches, and teacher supports. I describe one representation of investigations that began as a tool for my analysis and design, then analyze how I incorporated it as an epistemic tool in work with teachers.
Theoretical Framework
I draw from sociocultural approaches that treat practices as interactionally accomplished and located in representational infrastructures (Wenger, 1998; Hall & Greeno, 2008). Tools mediate practices and contribute to the representational infrastructure that supports activity, but are shaped by the purposes for which they’re used, which can differ across individuals and communities.
Figure 1 (Author, 2015) locates an investigation (plants in different conditions) in relation to a phenomenon (e.g., a backyard with different plants in different places), observations & evidence, and an explanation (different plants are successful in different light conditions). This framework makes visible the uncertainty scientists experience, and the practices they employ to manage transitions between these elements. I ask how this framework might become a tool for teachers to make shifts in teaching science investigations. In designing, I ask how it makes contact with the goals and representational infrastructure that characterize teachers’ current work; in analysis, I ask whether, when, and for what purposes teachers take up the framework.


Figure 1. Reconceptualizing Empirical Investigations
Methods
I adapted Figure 1 as a teacher planning and analysis tool, then used methods from design-based research (Cobb et al, 2003) to (1) understand how Figure 1 served as a tool for five second grade teachers adapting and teaching an earth materials investigation and (2) make principled improvements for future work.
Data Sources
Data sources were design rationales, video, artifacts, and field notes from planning meetings (n=7), classroom video records, and post-investigation teacher interviews. Analysis focused (1) on explicit work around the tool and (2) how teachers made sense of Figure 1’s components and relationships, even if the tool was not explicitly in use.
Results
The tool served to orient group planning but was taken up in different ways by researchers and teachers. Teachers mapped it to their representational infrastructure, making that visible to the researchers (e.g., the structure of curriculum materials; decisions about what to leave open vs. tell students). The researcher used the tool to represent teachers’ ideas in relation to her theory. Further, the researcher maintained ownership of the tool (e.g., wrote on it; usually reintroduced it) and its significance in activity decreased as the group oriented toward more pressing aspects of their representational infrastructure (e.g., a district-wide planner). These findings have informed redesign efforts, including incorporating a routine to negotiate the tool as a design and analysis object.
Scholarly Significance
This paper contributes to approaches to supporting teachers to take up more new practices supporting students’ evidence construction. It highlights the need to understand, and develop routines to negotiate, tools within a representational infrastructure.

Author

• Eve Manz, Boston University