Dewey’s "Conjectural Anticipation" and the Animating Power of Big Ideas for Agency in Science Learning

• In Event: Theory Into Practice in Science Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Student agency depends on control within classroom activities but also on some sort of animating power by which efforts are motivated and directed toward learning. Dewey reasoned that ‘conjectural anticipation,’ comprising expectations about relationships, was the seat of this animating power. We propose that conjectural anticipation is a useful concept for science education. In this field, animating forces of agency are sought in the learning environment and in students’ prior experience, but largely overlooked in the big ideas whose abstract structures are meant to shape student understandings of domains. In a qualitative study, we show how the abstract structure of one big idea, energy, enables conjectural anticipation and agency when learning about cellular respiration in 9th-grade biology.

Authors

• Jonathan T. Shemwell, University of Alabama

• Daniel K. Capps, University of Georgia

• Jennifer Yauck, Oglethorpe County High School

• Elizabeth Young, Oglethorpe County High School