Differential Effects of Autonomy-Supportive Scaffolding on Secondary Students' Scientific Evaluation and Knowledge Construction

• In Event: Focusing the Analytic Lens on Evidence-Based Reasoning: Where We Are and Where We Need to Go

Abstract

Objectives

Understanding scientific principles is often challenging for students. Learning difficulties may be enhanced when students reason about the connections between scientific evidence and explanations, particularly in light of popular, but non-scientific alternatives (e.g., often found in socio-scientific topics such as climate change). Instructional scaffolding may facilitate students’ understanding in these situations. Further, autonomy-supportive scaffolding may be especially effective for adolescent students when learning about socio-scientific issues (Medrano et al., 2020). We investigated the differential effects of two scaffold types—low versus high autonomy support—that facilitate students’ evaluations of the connections between scientific evidence and alternative explanations of socio-scientific phenomena.

Theoretical Framework

Effective science learning and building an understanding of socio-scientific phenomena (e.g., climate change, fresh water resource security; Sadler et al., 2017) requires students to critique and evaluate scientific evidence in light of alternative plausible explanations (Lombardi et al., 2016). Specifically, more critical evaluations may help students make more science-guided judgments when evaluating evidence and explanations (Ford, 2015). Lombardi and colleagues (2018) have shown that an instructional scaffold, called the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagram, can facilitate this process by shifting students’ plausibility toward a more scientific stance and deepening students’ science knowledge.
The purpose of the present study was to examine differences between two different MEL formats, the pre-constructed MEL (pcMEL; less autonomy supportive) and the build-a MEL (baMEL; more autonomy supportive). In the pcMEL, students evaluated given lines of scientific evidence and two competing explanatory models, whereas the baMEL guides students to self-select relevant scientific evidence from a larger set and to link these to two self-chosen competing models (Bailey, et al., 2020). We hypothesized that the more autonomy-supportive baMEL would result in stronger relations between students’ scientific evaluations, plausibility judgements, and post-instructional knowledge (Lombardi, et al., 2016; Patall et al., 2019).

Methods

The present study was part of a multi-year project involving data collected in several middle and high school classrooms in the Middle Atlantic and the Southeastern US. Student participants (N = 297) were enrolled in Earth science courses and used the MEL during their normal curricular scope and sequence, covering social-scientific topics discussing climate, geology, water, or astronomy. Some measurements, including evidence-to-model evaluations and plausibility ratings of alternative models (pre- and post-diagram construction), were embedded within the MEL tasks, per Lombardi et al. (2018). Participant topic knowledge was measured pre- and post-activity.

Results

We constructed two structural equation models (Figures 1 and 2) to examine relations between evaluation, plausibility (pre/post) and knowledge (pre/post) using “warping” partial least squares (PLS) analyses, which affords greater accuracy by not assuming linear relationships (Kock, 2016). Both models had excellent GoF, with large effect sizes (> 0.44) and explained variance (average pathway: R2 > .19). Figures 1 and 2 show standardized values, revealing a stronger evaluation to post-plausibility to post-knowledge pathway for the baMEL compared to the pcMEL.

Significance

Results suggest that more autonomy-supportive scaffolding may facilitate students’ scientific evaluations and knowledge construction when learning about socio-scientific topics of local, regional, and global importance.

Authors

• Eric Cornelis Schoute, University of Maryland

• Doug Lombardi, University of Maryland