Research in Science Education
The practice of science education has been increasingly informed by research into science teaching and learning. Research in science education relies on a wide variety of methodologies, borrowed from many branches of science and engineering such as computer science, cognitive science, cognitive psychology and anthropology. Science education research aims to define or characterize what constitutes learning in science and how it is brought about.
John D. Bransford, et al., summarized massive research into student thinking as having three key findings:
- Preconceptions
- Prior ideas about how things work are remarkably tenacious and an educator must explicitly address a students' specific misconceptions if the student is to reconfigure his misconception in favour of another explanation. Therefore, it is essential that educators know how to learn about student preconceptions and make this a regular part of their planning.
- Knowledge Organization
- In order to become truly literate in an area of science, students must, "(a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application."
- Metacognition
- Students will benefit from thinking about their thinking and their learning. They must be taught ways of evaluating their knowledge and what they don't know, evaluating their methods of thinking, and evaluating their conclusions.
Educational technologies are being refined to meet the specific needs of science teachers. One research study examining how cellphones are being used in post-secondary science teaching settings showed that mobile technologies can increase student engagement and motivation in the science classroom.
According to a bibliography on constructivist-oriented research on teaching and learning science in 2005, about 64 percent of studies documented are carried out in the domain of physics, 21 percent in the domain of biology, and 15 percent in chemistry. The major reason for this dominance of physics in the research on teaching and learning appears to be that physics learning includes difficulties due to the particular nature of physics. Research on students conceptions has shown that most pre-instructional (everyday) ideas that students bring to physics instruction are in stark contrast to the physics concepts and principles to be achieved – from kindergarten to the tertiary level. Quite often students' ideas are incompatible with physics views. This also holds true for students’ more general patterns of thinking and reasoning.
Read more about this topic: Science Education
Famous quotes containing the words research, science and/or education:
“Men talk, but rarely about anything personal. Recent research on friendship ... has shown that male relationships are based on shared activities: men tend to do things together rather than simply be together.... Female friendships, particularly close friendships, are usually based on self-disclosure, or on talking about intimate aspects of their lives.”
—Bettina Arndt (20th century)
“My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat—a boat which, to revert to Neurath’s figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)