Monday, September 8, 2014

Week 3 Memo

Week 3 Memo
(Sampson & Gleim and Reiser, Berland & Kenyon)

The Reiser, Berland, and Kenyon article focuses on the examination of explanation and argumentation practices, in reference to a framework for K-12 science education.  According to the authors, an explanation should go beyond describing or defining a process and link a chain of reasoning to the phenomena to be explained.  They believe developing explanatory accounts includes not only construction, but also comparison and critique.  The reason explanation and argumentation are so interconnected is because ordinarily when creating an explanation, argumentation is used to support and challenge potential justifications of the explanation.  The interconnectedness can best be described by the statement, “In response to questions, explanations are developed through analyses of data from investigations and refined through argumentation” (Pg. 9).  These practices emphasize understanding of concepts by asking how and why certain phenomena are the way they are.  It also emphasizes how the scientific community builds knowledge and helps students understand by experiencing the process for themselves. The article then gives some examples of how these practices can be seen in the classroom. Explanation and argumentation aim to help students make sense of phenomena and understand them on an individual level, as opposed to replicating the understandings from a textbook or teacher.

The Sampson and Gleim article is an overview of the Argument Driven Inquiry instructional model and how it can be used in a Biology classroom.  According to the authors, “This model is designed to frame the goal of scientific inquiry as an effort to develop an argument that provides and supports an explanation for a research question” (Pg. 1).  A major strength of this model is that it allows students to learn empirically and be actively involved in their learning.  This model can be extremely effective when used to enhance a lab experiment or activity.  The article goes on to explain the eight steps in this model and describes an example lesson to show how it might look in a biology classroom.  There is a lot of argumentation and peer interaction, which aim to help develop a deeper understanding of a concept through revision of ideas and explanations; which supports critical thinking.


Both articles have a focus on explanation and argumentation practices being used as tools to help support learning scientific knowledge in the classroom.  The articles also emphasize the topics of inquiry and revision of ideas, as well as students learning empirically.  These articles seem to fit well with modeling.  Inquiry, revision of ideas, peer interaction, and learning empirically are all extremely engrained in modeling. Overall, I liked the two articles and thought the examples were very helpful to understand how these ideas can be employed in a classroom.  However, I was shocked that in the results of the Sampson and Gleim article the answer to the question was that at least one of the children belonged to Mr. Smith and not Mr. Jones.  It is very cool that this testing can be done, but seriously? Mrs. Jones is having an affair with Mr. Smith and some of her children are his?  Maybe I’m used to happier endings, but that seems like a pretty intense and morbid answer to the question.  Ethically, if we are trying to teach students good morals, why would we make it the case that Mrs. Jones is cheating on her husband? (And likely Mr. Smith cheating on his wife) Even if that’s the case they could easily make Mr. Jones the father of them all.  Or forget the whole affair and say the kids were made in vitro and there are two sperm donors, which child belongs to which father?

3 comments:

  1. If you were to incorporate explanation and argumentation into modeling, then how important is previous content knowledge before experimentation? Making sure that students have a base of knowledge of the concepts that are being modeled must surely take precedence. While you were shocked to find the results of the question in the article, isn’t finding information, irrelevant to its’ shock value, an important part of science? While some students might find this problem disturbing or a threat to their values of marriage, it could teach some students the importance of the scientific method. Also, the teacher could tell the students beforehand that the people in this problem are fictitious. Weren’t people once upset to find that the Earth orbits the Sun and not vice versa?

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  2. I agree it is important that students have some previous content knowledge before experimentation is done. However, I think explanation and argumentation fit into the concept modeling. These two practices have a focus on inquiry, revision of ideas, peer interaction, and learning empirically. All of these topics are important in modeling as well, so I think using explanation and argumentation can be an effective way to help provide students with an approach to revise models, with the support of fellow peers. I completely agree that finding information is an important part of science. I also agree the way the lesson was set up could teach some students the importance of the scientific method. Of course some people were upset to find that the Earth orbits the Sun and not vice versa. However, from an ethical perspective, there are better ways of setting up a similar problem where students can still learn from investigation. I would argue that schooling has some influence in shaping students’ values and educators should incorporate positive values into the classroom instead of negative ones. I suppose all I was saying is that at the end of the day the same points about the scientific method and investigation of blood types could have been made without such a morbid background story. But, as Rocky Balboa might put it, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows, it’s a very mean and nasty place” (Rocky Balboa 2006). With that, I digress. Different teachers have different methods, but you brought up a good point; at least the students were still learning about the course content!

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  3. I was also shocked that Sampson and Gleim's teaching example involving blood typing was to prove or disprove for a husband that his wife's children were actually his. That seems completely inappropriate for a school experiment, and I could think of a dozen other ways that lab could have been set up without involving sexist undertones. It makes me wonder what uncouth subjects I might miss as a teacher, not realizing the topic is particularly sensitive to a student or his/her family. Multicultural education is not something I considered specifically for scientific modeling, but I should definitely be thinking about that as I decide how I want to set up my labs.
    I definitely see the value with incorporating critical writing into modeling. Not only does this improve skills for the scientifically oriented students, but it includes the creative writers who might not have been interested in modeling before. Providing a paper to outline an argument citing multiple evidences for support is just like solving a mystery in many ways. Not to be completely redundant, but can you imagine having students do a full write up on why or why not Mr. Smith is the baby daddy of Mrs. Jones' child/children?! That would be like modeling an episode of Maury in the classroom.

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