Linda Heidenrich
SED 600
Review #3: Nature of Science Presentation
I was overall impressed with the research presented by Tom, George and Jennifer
and see applications from each for my classroom. Therefore, I will incorporate providing
students with objectives upon which to evaluate their success due to Tom’s presentation
and incorporate more technological assignments due to George’s presentation because
they both convinced me of the value of their ideas. Yet, Jennifer’s presentation intrigued
me on multiple levels: examining the effects on learning of science if the nature of
science is explicitly taught, the value of incorporating external sources into the science
curriculum to explicitly teach the nature of science and the response her students had to
the explicit curriculum. The biggest surprise of Jennifer’s presentation came from the
realization I am not comfortable with the nature of science myself and the value of it
within the science curriculum to aid understanding and decrease misconceptions.
The positive aspects of Jennifer’s presentation were her incorporation of resources
from the masters’ program, her integration of the leading researchers and her careful
personal interviews and surveys. Jennifer included the McComas article from the first
class period of SED 625 as part of her literature review, an article she stated encouraged
her research even though it did not take shape until much later for her. In addition, she
referenced AAAS, one of the leading groups defining nature of science and supporting
the explicit integration of nature of science into the curriculum. Therefore, Jennifer
chose reliable and relevant sources. Jennifer was also able to conduct in-depth surveys
and interviews due to her small sample size allowing her to present great quotes showing
growth in the students’ understanding of the tentativeness, the creative and the inferential
components of the nature of science. This attention to detail resulted in convincing data
about the benefits of an explicit nature of science curriculum. Some negative aspects of
Jennifer’s study included her small sample size, data presented only from surveys and her
failure to disclose her explicit curriculum. Jennifer herself noted the limitations of a
sample size of five, yet this limitation makes extrapolation into my classroom difficult to
predict. Also, I did not recognize explicit triangulation in her study.
Finally, Jennifer
should have included samples of some of the activities that resulted in the change in the
students between the pre- and post- surveys.
The relevance for my action research project regarding Jennifer’s study is the
benefit of incorporating external sources and small learning communities. My action
research relates to the academic achievement of academies which include both unique
field trips to external sites and small learning communities. In the science component of
the law academy, we will visit the morgue and a forensic science police department lab
and speak with forensic scientists so the students can create relevance between the
science in the classroom and science in their chosen profession. In addition, the academy
creates an environment with smaller class sizes allowing students to experience science in
a constructivist format and make the information more relevant. I think this environment
of relevance and discovery will be a factor in the increased achievement seen in
academies I am researching for my project.