Learning With Text in Science

• In Event: Adolescents Learning With Text in the Academic Disciplines

Abstract

As students move through their school day, they go to English, science, social studies, and other classes such as art, music, or shop. If they approach these in the same way, with the same strategies for reading text, they are not likely to do very well. Paying attention to character, plot, theme, conflict, and figurative language won’t really help students to understand a scientific process through a diagram and written explanation, nor will it help them to structure a scientific argument. In fact, students may not do very well if the only change they make is from one field of science to another.
Reading in Science is not straightforward, because different sciences approach their fields in somewhat unique ways. For example, a chemist, relying on lab experiments and chemical structures is engaged in much different tasks in creating new knowledge than a biologist, who may rely on observation of natural phenomenon. On some level, yes, all scientists are engaged in the same enterprise; that is, they are trying to understand and manipulate the world, and they all use various forms of observation, experimentation, categorization, and so on. Yet, they often use different tools, engage in unique kinds of discourse and emphasize a particular kind of data gathering over others. Differences don’t only exist at the level of the field, but at the level of phenomenon that is being studied. For example, studying the genetic makeup of the brown bear is different from studying the bear’s behavior in the wild, even though those who do those studies are both engaged in science. Therefore, even though in this paper we are treating science as one subject, it is important that we pause here to recognize that what is being talked about here may apply to one kind of science over another.
This paper will begin with the role of text in science classrooms, the research on expert use of text, what experts say about students’ science reading, and the implications for that use on science teaching and learning. The paper will end with examples of general and discipline specific strategies to teach students as they read science text so that they can respond to reading in discipline—appropriate ways.

Author

• Cynthia R. Shanahan, University of Illinois at Chicago