scholarly journals Integrating engineering in K-12 science education: spelling out the pedagogical, epistemological, and methodological arguments

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Senay Purzer ◽  
Jenny Patricia Quintana-Cifuentes
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
Student Learning Outcomes ◽  
School Science ◽  
School Resources ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Teaching Models ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Stem Literacy ◽  
K 12

AbstractThis position paper is motivated by recent educational reform efforts that urge the integration of engineering in science education. We argue that it is plausible and beneficial to integrate engineering into formal K-12 science education. We illustrate how current literature, though often implicitly, discusses this integration from a pedagogical, epistemological, or methodological argumentative stance. From a pedagogical perspective, a historically dominant argument emphasizes how engineering helps make abstract science concepts more concrete. The epistemological argument is centered on how engineering is inherently interdisciplinary and hence its integrative role in support of scientific literacy and more broadly STEM literacy is natural. From a methodological perspective, arguments focus on the engineering design process, which is compatible with scientific inquiry and adaptable to answering different types of engineering questions. We call for the necessity of spelling out these arguments and call for common language as science and engineering educators form a research-base on the integration of science and engineering. We specifically provide and discuss specific terminology associated with four different models, each effectively used to integrate engineering into school science. We caution educators against a possible direction towards a convergence approach for a specific type of integrating engineering and science. Diversity in teaching models, more accurately represents the nature of engineering but also allows adaptations based on available school resources. Future synthesis can then examine student learning outcomes associated with different teaching models.

scholarly journals COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON THE UNDERSTANDINGS OF NATURE OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY BETWEEN SCIENCE TEACHERS FROM SHANGHAI AND CHICAGO

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Jingying Wang ◽  
Ying Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
Science Teachers ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
School Science ◽  
High School Science ◽  
K 12

Nature of science is considered to be an important component of scientific literacy, and understanding the nature of science is advocated as an important goal of science education. Scientific inquiry is regarded as the core of curriculum reform, which has become the consensus of the international K-12 science education, as well as a scientific direction for which educators have been striving over the last century. To compare the views of nature of science and scientific inquiry of teachers between China and United States, 90 high school science teachers from Shanghai and Chicago are chosen to do open-ended questionnaires and interviews. By conducting the sequential mixed method and using the empirical investigations of VNOS-D and VOSI-S, their different understandings mainly perform in the specific aspects of nature of science and scientific inquiry, cognitive stages, types and relationships etc. Overall, the level of American teachers’ views of nature of science and science inquiry are better than Chinese. Finally, some suggestions on Chinese science teachers’ education are proposed. Key words: epistemological belief in science, nature of science, scientific inquiry.

Teaching & Learning in Nanoscale Science & Engineering: A Focus on Social & Ethical Issues and K-16 Science Education

2006 ◽  
Vol 931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldrin E. Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Nanoscale Science And Engineering ◽  
Engineering Research ◽  
Social And Ethical Issues ◽  
Nanoscale Science ◽  
K 12

ABSTRACTContinuing advances in human ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels (i.e. nanoscale science and technology) offer a range of previously unimagined possibilities for scientific discovery and technological application. Paralleling these scientific advances is the increasing realization that a number of associated ethical, environmental, economic, legal and social implications also need to be explored [1]. Additionally, prominent commentators such as Mihail Roco [2] of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (www.nano.gov) have argued that “education and training [in scientific concepts at the nanoscale] must be introduced at all levels, from kindergarten to continuing education, from scientists to non-technical audiences that may decide the use of technology and its funding” (p. 1248).The paper below is structured in three inter-related sections. The first section provides a brief report on science education research conducted in the third year of an initial 3-year National Science Foundation funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in nanoscience and nanotechnology at the University of Central Florida. Participating undergraduate students and research faculty were asked to respond to a survey -adapted from Bainbridge [3]- that attempted to measure their attitudes to a variety of social and ethical issues currently associated with nanoscale science and engineering research. Selected findings are presented, and implications for the future of K-16 science education, undergraduate engineering education and Science-Technology-Society (STS) studies also are briefly discussed.Consideration of social and ethical issues associated with nanotechnology research will generate several implications for general scientific literacy and public science education policy. Some of these implications are addressed in the second section. Given the extent to which these new technologies are expected to impact all aspects of human experience, public scientific literacy regarding nanotechnology becomes an issue of considerable importance. Here, the onus falls on science educators at the K-12 and university levels to become knowledgeable about nanoscale science and engineering research, and to share their pedagogical expertise with nanotechnology researchers. This section of the presentation will focus on the “social and ethical issues in science” K-12 standards already present in national documents such as the U.S. National Science Education Standards, the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061 Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy, and the British National Curriculum. Specific examples from current research in nanoscale science and engineering are used to demonstrate how various nanoscale science/engineering concepts may usefully be incorporated into the K-12 science curriculum.The third section of the paper provides an overview of selected international efforts in K-16 nanoscale science and engineering education, and briefly discusses various instructional approaches and techniques that are likely to be useful for other science and engineering educators. Examples are used from a forthcoming book on nanoscale science and engineering education for which the author is a co-editor.

Why Engaging in the Practices of Science Is Not Enough to Achieve Scientific Literacy

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. 370-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy R. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Next Generation Science Standards ◽  
Habits Of Mind ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
Effective Science ◽  
Culture Of Science ◽  
K 12

The National Research Council's Framework for K–12 Science Education and the resulting Next Generation Science Standards call for engaging students in the practices of science to develop scientific literacy. While these documents make the connections between scientific knowledge and practices explicit, very little attention is given to the shared values and commitments of the scientific community that underlie these practices and give them meaning. I argue that effective science education should engage students in the practices of science while also reflecting on the values, commitments, and habits of mind that have led to the practices of modern science and that give them meaning. The concept of methodological naturalism demonstrates the connection between the values and commitments of the culture of science and its practices and provides a useful lens for understanding the benefits and limitations of scientific knowledge.

scholarly journals Luonnontiedekasvatuksen muuttuvat tavoitteet: luonnontieteellisestä lukutaidosta kestävyyskasvatukseen, toimijuuteen ja tulevaisuusajatteluun

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Laherto
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Science Education ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
School Science ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Transformative Education ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Action Science ◽  
Building Activities

Globaalit ympäristö- ja kestävyyskriisit muuttavat luonnontiedekasvatuksen tavoitteita, didaktiikkaa ja tutkimusta. Luonnontieteellisen lukutaidon (engl. scientific literacy) merkitys kytketään yhä useammin transformatiiviseen kestävyyskasvatukseen. Siinä ei riitä, että koulussa opitaan luonnontieteen sisältötietoa tai sen käyttämistä arjessa, vaan luonnontiedekasvatuksen pitää lisäksi tukea vastuullista toimijuutta ja arvopohjaista muutosta sekä yksilöissä että yhteiskunnassa. Artikkelissa argumentoidaan, että tulevaisuudentutkimuksen ajattelutapoja hyödyntämällä on mahdollista tukea vaihtoehtojen ja vaikutusmahdollisuuksien näkemistä ja niihin tarttumista. Luonnontieteiden opetus tarjoaa hyvän alustan skenaarioajattelulle, tulevaisuuden epävarmuuden kohtaamiselle ja uudistavan toimijuusorientaation rakentamiselle. Ehdotuksia konkretisoidaan esittelemällä I SEE -projektissa kehitettyä tulevaisuusorientoitunutta luonnontiedeopetusta. Lopuksi pohditaan ehdotusten ajankohtaista merkitystä kestävyysongelmien ja COVID19-pandemiankin aikoina.   Changing Goals of Science Education: From Scientific Literacy to Education for Sustainable Development, Agency, and Futures thinking Abstract Global sustainability crises are changing the aims, pedagogies and research in science education. The field is increasingly oriented towards transformative education for sustainable development. School science should now support responsible agency and value-based transformation. This article argues that the thinking in the field of Futures Studies can help students to see alternative futures and take action. Science education provides excellent opportunities for scenario building activities, addressing the uncertainty, and shaping transformative agentic orientations. Future-oriented activities developed in the I SEE project are presented as an example. The suggestions are discussed with relation to the topical sustainability crises and the COVID19 pandemic. Keywords: science education, education for sustainable development, futures thinking, agency

SOME FEATURES OF TODAY`S SCIENCE EDUCATION

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
Vincentas Lamanauskas
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Science Teachers ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
School Science ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
School Level ◽  
Science Textbooks ◽  
Learning Content ◽  
Teaching Learning

Recently, the issues of science education have been exhaustively discussed. The questions of science education are debated at all levels. The today‘s situation in science education area puts forward set of problems to be indispensably solved. In this editorial such problematic aspects as qualification of science teachers, modernisation of system of preparation of science teachers in a context of the theory of constructivism, improvement of material resources of schools etc. Are shortly presented. It is stated that more attention it is necessary to give to school science textbooks and their effective usage in educational process. For example, in february 2007 an International Meeting of IOSTE on „Critical Analysis of School Science Textbook“ was organized in Hammamet (Tunisia). A lot of empirical results dealing with the anglysis of syllabuses and science textbooks were presented during the meeting. In Lithuania there are also some actual problems connected with school science textbooks, for example methodological level, quality of teaching /learning content, didactically well-founded visualisation etc. Such questions as scientific literacy, e-literacy, illiteracy, interests and motivation in science, quality of science education process at primary school level are the burning issues.

In and out of the School Activities Implementing IBSE and Constructionist Learning Methodologies by Means of Robotics

2013 ◽  
pp. 1068-1093
Author(s):  
G. Barbara Demo ◽  
Michele Moro ◽  
Alfredo Pina ◽  
Javier Arlegui
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Young People ◽  
Peer Education ◽  
Computational Thinking ◽  
Learning Theories ◽  
School Resources ◽  
Educational Robotics ◽  
Content Areas ◽  
School Activities ◽  
K 12

In this chapter, the authors describe an inquiry-based science education (IBSE) theoretical framework as it was applied to robotics activities carried out in European K-12 classrooms during the last six years. Interactions between IBSE, problem-based learning, constructivist/constructionist learning theories, and technology are discussed. Example activities demonstrate that educational robotics capitalizes on the digital curiosity of young people. This leads to concrete experiences in STEM content areas and spreads computational thinking to all school types and levels. Cooperation among different stakeholders (students, teachers, scientific and disseminating institutions, families) is emphasized in order to exploit in and out of the classroom school resources, competencies, and achievements and for implementing peer-to-peer education among students and teachers in the same class/school or from different schools.

scholarly journals First Steps Towards NLP-based Formative Feedback to Improve Scientific Writing in Hebrew

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moriah Ariely ◽  
Tanya Nazaretsky ◽  
Giora Alexandron
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Research Question ◽  
School Science ◽  
Scientific Writing ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
High School Science ◽  
Data Set ◽  
K 12

As scientific writing is an important 21st century skill, its development is a major goal in high school science education. Research shows that developing scientific writing skills requires frequent and tailored feedback, which teachers, who face large classes and limited time for personalized instruction, struggle to give. Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies offer great promise to assist teachers in thisprocess by automating some of the analysis. However, in Hebrew, the use of NLP in computer-supported writing instruction was until recently hindered by the lack of publicly available resources. In this paper, we present initial results from a study that aims to develop NLP-based techniques to assist teachers in providing personalized feedback in scientific writing in Hebrew, which might be applicable to otherlanguages as well. We focus on writing inquiry reports in Biology, and specifically, on the task of automatically identifying whether the report contains a properly de?ned research question. This serves as a proof-of-concept of whether we can build a pipeline that identifies major components of the report and match them to a predefined grading rubric. To achieve this, we collected several hundreds of reports, annotated them according to a grading rubric to create a supervised data set, and built a machine-learning algorithm that uses NLP-based features. The results show that our model can accurately identify the research question or its absence.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to report on the application of Hebrew NLP for formative assessment in K-12 science education.

scholarly journals En språkfundert kompetansemodell for planlegging av undervisning

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Erik Knain
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Scientific Literacy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
School Science ◽  
General Conception ◽  
School Subjects ◽  
Future Science ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Do So

I utdanningsvitenskapelig litteratur er ulike former for ”literacy” et vedvarende fokus både teoretisk og empirisk. I engelskspråklig naturfagdidaktisk litteratur brukes betegnelsen ”scientific literacy”. Jeg skisserer i denne artikkelen et planleggingsverktøy for undervisning som bygger på en eksplisitt teoretisk modell for deltakelse gjennom språk. Modellen er bindeledd mellom et generalisert kompetansebegrep og planlegging av undervisning ved at den knytter sammen de didaktiske spørsmålene hva, hvem, hvordan og hvorfor med en modell for funksjonell deltakelse. Modellen er spesielt relevant for et allmenndannende ”naturfag for alle”, men favner også et naturfag som fokuserer på utdanning av framtidas naturvitere. Artikkelen retter seg mot naturfag i skolen, men modellen bør kunne anvendes også i andre skolefag. Modellen peker mot et situert og transformativt kompetansebegrep.Nøkkelord: naturfag , kompetanse , diskurs , deltakelse, undervisning og læringAbstractVarious forms of literacy have long been the focus of educational discourses, not the least in science education where the term “scientific literacy” has been an enduring concern for decades. In this article I describe a tool for designing teaching based on a theoretical perspective on participation through language. The model connects a general conception of competence with the planning of teaching. To do so it drowe on the didactical questions of “what, who, how and why”. The model is particularly relevant in a “science for all” perspective but also for the educating of future science specialists. Although school science is the primary focus in this article, the model should be applicable to other school subjects as well. The model opens for a situated and transformative notion of competence.Keywords: scientific literacy, discourse, participation, teaching and learning

Reification of Five Types of Modeling Pedagogies with Model-Based Inquiry (MBI) Modules for High School Science Classrooms

2013 ◽  
pp. 401-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Campbell ◽  
Phil Seok Oh ◽  
Drew Neilson
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Science Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
School Science ◽  
High School Science ◽  
Learning Sequence ◽  
Science Classrooms ◽  
Education Standards ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Science Education Standards

It has been declared that practicing science is aptly described as making, using, testing, and revising models. Modeling has also emerged as an explicit practice in science education reform efforts. This is evidenced as modeling is highlighted as an instructional target in the recently released Conceptual Framework for the New K-12 Science Education Standards: it reads that students should develop more sophisticated models founded on prior knowledge and skills and refined as understanding develops. Reflecting the purpose of engaging students in modeling in science classrooms, Oh and Oh (2011) have suggested five modeling activities, the first three of which were based van Joolingen’s (2004) earlier proposal: 1) exploratory modeling, 2) expressive modeling, 3) experimental modeling, 4) evaluative modeling, and 5) cyclic modeling. This chapter explores how these modeling activities are embedded in high school physics classrooms and how each is juxtaposed as concurrent instructional objectives and scaffolds a progressive learning sequence. Through the close examination of modeling in situ within the science classrooms, the authors expect to better explicate and illuminate the practices outlined and support reform in science education.

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