Scaffolding 4th Grade Students’ Scientific Explanation Writing

Yang, H. T., & Wang, K. H. (2014). A Teaching Model for Scaffolding 4th Grade Students’ Scientific Explanation Writing. Research in Science Education, 44(4), 531-548. doi: 10.1007/s11165-013-9392-8

Background

The authors state that the broad purpose of Science is to explain phenomena. In the context of education, the aim of Science education is different, with the aim being to develop a high degree of scientific literacy in the students. As part of the aim of Science education, students need to develop an understanding of scientific concepts and they need to be able to explain everyday phenomena from a scientific perspective.

Aims

The aim of the study was to examine the effect of the DCI teaching model developed by the authors to improve students’ written scientific explanations. The DCI teaching model features three strategies: a descriptive explanation, concept mapping, and an interpretive explanation writing activity.

Sample

The participants comprised two 4th grade classes in the same school in Taiwan, with 24 students aged 10-11 years old taking three hours a week of classes over four weeks.

Method

The method was an experimental design, including an experimental group and a non-randomized comparison group. Only students in the experimental group were taught using the DCI model. In essence, students in the experimental group had additional writing tasks and concept mapping to support their learning of scientific explanations while students in the comparison group learnt the content aurally, which is the traditional teaching methodology of Taiwan. A pre- and post-test design was adopted for this study, with all students taking a test to check for their conceptual understanding of the moon’s phases before and after the instruction.

Findings

Based on the test results on the moon’s phases, the results of the study showed that:

Students in the experimental group performed better than students in the comparison group, both in scientific concept understanding and explanation.

In scientific explanation, students in the experimental group presented more suitable claims and logical reasoning than students in the comparison group.

The result was consistent with another study, which found that students’ scientific reasoning can be developed within a short period, using a well-designed model.

Implications

The authors stated that other researchers could test the benefits of embedding the DCI teaching model in various units of formal Science classes, and measure student progress in learning to make scientific explanations. The authors also suggested that future researchers could focus on how, and to what degree, the DCI process may improve individual students’ ability to learn to make scientific explanations.

Original article retrieved from ERIC.