Scientific reasoning and writing skills are ubiquitous processes in science and therefore common goals of science curricula, particularly in higher education. Providing the individualized feedback necessary for the development of these skills is often costly in terms of faculty time, particularly in large science courses common at research universities. Past educational research literature suggests that the use of peer review may accelerate students' scientific reasoning skills without a concurrent demand on faculty time per student. Peer review contains many elements of effective pedagogy such as peer-peer collaboration, repeated practice at evaluation and critical thinking, formative feedback, multiple contrasting examples, and extensive writing. All of these pedagogies may contribute to improvement in students' scientific reasoning. The effect of peer review on scientific reasoning was assessed using three major data sources: student performance on written lab reports, student performance on an objective Scientific Reasoning Test (Lawson, 1978) and student perceptions of the process of peer review in scientific community as well as the classroom. In addition, the need to measure student performance across multiple science classes resulted in the development of a Universal Rubric for Laboratory Reports. The reliability of this instrument and its effect on the grading consistency of graduate teaching assistants were also tested. Further, application of the Universal Rubric to student laboratory reports across multiple biology classes revealed that the Rubric is further useful as a programmatic assessment tool. The Rubric highlighted curricular gaps and strengths as well as measuring student achievement over time. / This study demonstrated that even university freshman were effective and consistent peer reviewers and produced feedback that resulted in meaningful improvement in their science writing. Use of peer review accelerated the development of students' scientific reasoning abilities as measured both by laboratory reports (n = 142) and by the Scientific Reasoning Test (n = 389 biology majors) and this effect was stronger than the impact of several years of university coursework. The structure of the peer review process and the structure of the assignments used to generate the science laboratory reports had notable influence on student performance however. Improvements in laboratory reports were greatest when the peer review process emphasized the generation of concrete and evaluative written feedback and when assignments explicitly incorporated the rubric criteria. The rubric was found to be reliable in the hands of graduate student teaching assistants (using generalizability analysis, g = 0.85) regardless of biological course content (three biology courses, total n = 142 student papers). Reliability increased as the number of criteria incorporated into the assignment increased. Consistent use of Universal Rubric criteria in undergraduate courses taught by graduate teaching assistants produced laboratory report scores with reliability values similar to those reported for other published rubrics and well above the reliabilities reported for professional peer review. / Lastly, students were overwhelmingly positive about peer review (83% average positive response, n = 1,026) reporting that it improved their writing, editing, researching and critical thinking skills. Interestingly, students reported that the act of giving feedback was equally useful to receiving feedback. Students connected the use of peer review in the classroom to its role in the scientific community and characterized peer review as a valuable skill they wished to acquire in their development as scientists. Peer review is thus an effective pedagogical strategy for improving student scientific reasoning skills. Specific recommendations for classroom implementation and use of the Universal Rubric are provided. Use of laboratory reports for assessing student scientific reasoning and application of the Universal Rubric across multiple courses, especially for programmatic assessment, is also recommended.

abstract: Writing scientific explanations is increasingly important, and today's students must have the ability to navigate the writing process to create a persuasive scientific explanation. One aspect of the writing process is receiving feedback before submitting a final draft. This study examined whether middle school students benefit more in the writing process from receiving peer feedback or teacher feedback on rough drafts of scientific explanations. The study also looked at whether males and females reacted differently to the treatment groups. And it examined if content knowledge and the written scientific explanations were correlated. The study looked at 38 sixth and seventh-grade students throughout a 7-week earth science unit on earth systems. The unit had six lessons. One lesson introduced the students to writing scientific explanations, and the other five were inquiry-based content lessons. They wrote four scientific explanations throughout the unit of study and received feedback on all four rough drafts. The sixth-graders received teacher feedback on each explanation and the seventh-graders received peer-feedback after learning how to give constructive feedback. The students also took a multiple-choice pretest/posttest to evaluate content knowledge. The analyses showed that there was no significant difference between the group receiving peer feedback and the group receiving teacher feedback on the final drafts of the scientific explanations. There was, however, a significant effect of practice on the scores of the scientific explanations. Students wrote significantly better with each subsequent scientific explanation. There was no significant difference between males and females based on the treatment they received. There was a significant correlation between the gain in pretest to posttest scores and the scientific explanations and a significant correlation between the posttest scores and the scientific explanations. Content knowledge and written scientific explanations are related. Students who wrote scientific explanations had significant gains in content knowledge. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

Este estudo é uma pesquisa qualitativa que buscou analisar as relações existentes entre o discurso oral e o registro escrito, em aulas de Ciências do 4º ano do Ensino Fundamental. Nessas aulas foram utilizadas atividades investigativas, criadas pelo Laboratório de Pesquisa e Ensino de Física da Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo, nas quais os alunos foram levados a discutir e escrever sobre um tema científico. Para estabelecer essa relação foi necessário fazer um levantamento bibliográfico acerca do que se acredita ser um Ensino de Ciências eficiente, sobre a importância de haver nessas aulas de Ciências atividades que levem os alunos a discussão de ideias com seus pares e posterior registro escrito da atividade, e também sobre como outros autores têm analisado o discurso dos alunos em sala de aula. Tivemos como dados da pesquisa as transcrições de três aulas da sequência didática A submersão do Nautilus e os registros escritos realizados nessas aulas. A análise buscou relacionar a participação oral dos cinco alunos da amostra com os registros escritos por eles. Para a realização da análise, foram levados em consideração os seguintes aspectos: a pessoa do discurso utilizada, os verbos de ação empregados, a cronologia dos eventos, a estrutura do pensamento segundo o Modelo de Toulmin, os indicadores da alfabetização científica e o apoio do desenho ao texto escrito realizado. Após a análise pudemos concluir que a discussão oral ajuda os alunos no momento do registro escrito; que os registros escritos de quem participa efetivamente da discussão têm elementos argumentativos superiores ou pelo menos iguais aos da discussão oral; que as ideias circuladas durante a discussão aparecem no registro escrito da atividade de muitos alunos; que a discussão de ideias se faz importante para distribuir conhecimento; e que os registros dos alunos que não participam das discussões se apresentam de forma incompleta e com poucos elementos argumentativos. Diante desse contexto, ressaltamos a importância de aulas de Ciências que preveem em suas atividades momentos de fala e escrita dos alunos do tema trabalhado, para aumentar o nível de conhecimento científico desses alunos. / This study is a qualitative research that analized the relationship between the oral speech and the written record, in Science classes of the 4th grade of Elementary School. In such classes, investigative activities created by the Laboratory of Research and Teaching of Physics, of the Faculty of Education at University of São Paulo, were performed in which the students were asked to discuss and write about a scientific subject. In order to establish a relationship, it was necessary a bibliographic revision of what is recognized to be an efficient Science Education, about the importance of having in such Science classes activities that conduct students to the discussion of ideas with their classmates, the written record of the activities, as well as about how other authors have analized the speech of students in the classroom. The data of the study consists of transcriptions of three classes of the didactic sequence of The submergence of the Nautilus and the written records produced in such classes. The analysis aimed to relate the oral participation of the five students of the sample group with their written records. In the analysis, it was considered the following aspects: the subject used in the speech, the verbs employed, the a chronology of the events, the structure of thought according to the Toulmin Model, the indicators of scientific literacy and the support of the drawing to the written text. After the analysis it was possible to reach the conclusion that: the oral discussion helps students during the writing; the written records of those who really engage in the discussion have superior argumentative elements, or at least equivalent to those used in the oral discussion; the ideas stated during discussion are present in the written record of the activity of many students; the discussion of the ideas is relevant for the distribuition of knowledge; and finaly, the records of the students that did not take part in the discussion are incomplete and have fewer argumentative elements. In this context, it is emphasized the importance of exercising students speaking and writing skills, when developing a theme during the activities of Science classes, in order to improve the level of scientific knowledge of those students.

Este estudo é uma pesquisa qualitativa que buscou analisar as relações existentes entre o discurso oral e o registro escrito, em aulas de Ciências do 4º ano do Ensino Fundamental. Nessas aulas foram utilizadas atividades investigativas, criadas pelo Laboratório de Pesquisa e Ensino de Física da Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo, nas quais os alunos foram levados a discutir e escrever sobre um tema científico. Para estabelecer essa relação foi necessário fazer um levantamento bibliográfico acerca do que se acredita ser um Ensino de Ciências eficiente, sobre a importância de haver nessas aulas de Ciências atividades que levem os alunos a discussão de ideias com seus pares e posterior registro escrito da atividade, e também sobre como outros autores têm analisado o discurso dos alunos em sala de aula. Tivemos como dados da pesquisa as transcrições de três aulas da sequência didática A submersão do Nautilus e os registros escritos realizados nessas aulas. A análise buscou relacionar a participação oral dos cinco alunos da amostra com os registros escritos por eles. Para a realização da análise, foram levados em consideração os seguintes aspectos: a pessoa do discurso utilizada, os verbos de ação empregados, a cronologia dos eventos, a estrutura do pensamento segundo o Modelo de Toulmin, os indicadores da alfabetização científica e o apoio do desenho ao texto escrito realizado. Após a análise pudemos concluir que a discussão oral ajuda os alunos no momento do registro escrito; que os registros escritos de quem participa efetivamente da discussão têm elementos argumentativos superiores ou pelo menos iguais aos da discussão oral; que as ideias circuladas durante a discussão aparecem no registro escrito da atividade de muitos alunos; que a discussão de ideias se faz importante para distribuir conhecimento; e que os registros dos alunos que não participam das discussões se apresentam de forma incompleta e com poucos elementos argumentativos. Diante desse contexto, ressaltamos a importância de aulas de Ciências que preveem em suas atividades momentos de fala e escrita dos alunos do tema trabalhado, para aumentar o nível de conhecimento científico desses alunos. / This study is a qualitative research that analized the relationship between the oral speech and the written record, in Science classes of the 4th grade of Elementary School. In such classes, investigative activities created by the Laboratory of Research and Teaching of Physics, of the Faculty of Education at University of São Paulo, were performed in which the students were asked to discuss and write about a scientific subject. In order to establish a relationship, it was necessary a bibliographic revision of what is recognized to be an efficient Science Education, about the importance of having in such Science classes activities that conduct students to the discussion of ideas with their classmates, the written record of the activities, as well as about how other authors have analized the speech of students in the classroom. The data of the study consists of transcriptions of three classes of the didactic sequence of The submergence of the Nautilus and the written records produced in such classes. The analysis aimed to relate the oral participation of the five students of the sample group with their written records. In the analysis, it was considered the following aspects: the subject used in the speech, the verbs employed, the a chronology of the events, the structure of thought according to the Toulmin Model, the indicators of scientific literacy and the support of the drawing to the written text. After the analysis it was possible to reach the conclusion that: the oral discussion helps students during the writing; the written records of those who really engage in the discussion have superior argumentative elements, or at least equivalent to those used in the oral discussion; the ideas stated during discussion are present in the written record of the activity of many students; the discussion of the ideas is relevant for the distribuition of knowledge; and finaly, the records of the students that did not take part in the discussion are incomplete and have fewer argumentative elements. In this context, it is emphasized the importance of exercising students speaking and writing skills, when developing a theme during the activities of Science classes, in order to improve the level of scientific knowledge of those students.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:39:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4825.pdf: 2194802 bytes, checksum: 202005fb4d13872e3b726efdc9099bdf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-12-18 / The study characterizes the written record of a group of students from the 5th grade of primary classes in Brazil, in investigative science and its contribution to the development of writing. We analyze the interactions occurring during classes as well as students' written production. We examine how this process was linked with acquisition of writing and identify the resources used by students to communicate their observations, hypotheses and conclusions. The methodological design takes as a parameter an ethnographic approach, with systematic monitoring of science classes for a semester in addition to recording audio and video lessons planned with an investigative strategy. Was performed microanalysis of events occurring during the classes and analyzed the texts of students based on content analysis. The results indicate that change in the dynamics used in science classes, favored the use of writing structures that had not been explored by the participant group. In investigative classes analyzed in this study, the students could express their ideas, from what they had experienced with the experiments, with opportunities to use advanced cognitive abilities, being necessary to reorganize thought to express the new knowledge. / O estudo caracteriza o processo de registro escrito de uma turma de alunos do 5º ano do Ensino Fundamental, em aulas investigativas de ciências e sua contribuição no desenvolvimento da escrita. Analisamos as interações ocorridas durante as aulas bem como a produção escrita dos alunos. Examinamos como esse processo se articulava com aquisição da escrita e identificamos os recursos utilizados pelos alunos para comunicar suas observações, hipóteses e conclusões. O delineamento metodológico tomou como parâmetro a abordagem etnográfica, com acompanhamento sistemático das aulas de ciências por um semestre além da gravação em áudio e vídeo de aulas planejadas com estratégia investigativa. Realizou-se a microanálise de eventos ocorridos durante as aulas e analisaram-se os textos dos alunos com base na análise de conteúdo. Os resultados indicam que, a mudança nas dinâmicas utilizadas nas aulas de ciências, favoreceu o uso de estruturas de escrita que não haviam sido exploradas pelo grupo participante. Nas aulas investigativas analisadas neste estudo, os estudantes puderam expressar suas ideias, a partir do que haviam vivenciado com os experimentos, com oportunidades de utilizar habilidades cognitivas avançadas, sendo necessário reorganizar o pensamento para expressar o novo conhecimento.

This dissertation examines the nature, scope, and significance of a new pedagogical approach to teaching of views on nature of science (VNOS) to high school students. Educational approaches based on teaching ‘correct’ VNOS continue to be dominated by the epistemology of logical empiricism and, as I will point out, these approaches are inadequate to address the issues of VNOS. I assert and the findings presented in this dissertation offer evidence that students’ VNOS are dynamic and context-based. In this research I used filmmaking to explore students’ VNOS. High school students, supported by a professional filmmaking crew, completed a short film entitled, The Shadows of Hope; this film explores the use of scientific knowledge in understanding everyday life problems. The filmmaking environment introduced simultaneously a number of contexts in which students’ VNOS were concurrently collected using mixed methods methodology. The results show that contexts sway students’ VNOS and generate a variety of the VNOS for each student. Evidence shows that there is a common, theme-based pattern to individual students’ set of VNOS. The variety of expressed VNOS seemed natural to the students, with no registered discomfort. However, in this study a contrast between students’ VNOS and their ‘school-based’ understanding of science also became apparent. This is evidence that cognitive dissonance is not sufficient to explain the full spectrum of ways in which students learn, deepen knowledge and arrive to conceptual change. I assert that including cognitive contextual expansion in our understanding of conceptual change is essential to provide a framework that allows to integrate cognitive diversity into the theory of learning, reflecting a perhaps more natural way human mind works. The project’s findings offer evidence that students’ VNOS deepened and expanded through filmmaking; students arrived to a more examined and mature VNOS while enjoying the activity of making a film. There is evidence that cooperation with a professional team provided students with a feeling of respect and pride. Filmmaking offers a robust way of learning, based on collaborative work that enlivens a large number of learning-enhancing activities. Additional resources and a Brief Guide For Teachers are added to this text to support teachers in adopting filmmaking as a unique pedagogical method. / Graduate / 0714 / 0900 / 0533 / akottova@uvic.ca