The effect of using the science writing heuristic on grade six students' conceptual understanding of physical science

النوع : Mémoire

Laboratory activities in elementary science have for long followed a verificatio n approach both in the structure and reporting of the activity. Drawing on the c urrent understandings and prescriptions of writing to learn science, Keys and Ha nd developed a Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) that combines inquiry tasks, peer argumentation with both personal and canonical forms of writing. It also encour ages students to construct their own knowledge by posing their own questions, de termining claims, and providing evidence rather than simply following the teache r's instructions. This study reports on the implementation of the Heuristic in Grade 6 in a Lebane se school that uses International Physical Science Curriculum. An experimental a pproach was used to determine whether student performance on physical science co nceptual test improved when using the heuristic. Participants were 36 students d ivided equally into two independent sections (A and B), where section A served a s a control group and section B as an experimental group. The two groups receive d the same instruction by the same teacher. However, those in the experimental g roup used the SWH approach for their laboratory activities and writing the repor ts while students in the control group followed the verification approach to lab oratory activities and writing reports. Instruments used in this study included a conceptual physical science test desig ned by the researcher in collaboration with a science educator. A table of speci fications was used when designing the test to assure its validity. Descriptive s tatistics and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to analyze the data. Mor eover, all students in the experimental group responded to an open-ended questio nnaire and a sample of them were interviewed to investigate their perceptions of the SWH. The teacher, as well, was interviewed for the same purpose. Results indicated that students who used the verification approach performed as well as those who used the SWH approach in the immediate conceptual posttest whi le they scored significantly better than the SWH group in the delayed posttest. However, overall, student and teacher interview and survey responses indicate po sitive perceptions that were divided between a functional argument and an amusin g argument. The functional argument delineated the ...