A literature Review in Teaching Science in Elementary Schools by

Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Paedagogica-Psychologica

A Literature Review in Teaching Science in Elementary Schools by Using Knowledge Building Pedagogies
Dorian STOILESCU

Toronto University, Canada

Abstract. This paper reviews some important ways of improving students' achievement in science education by using collaborative methods in classrooms. Using knowledge building pedagogies as an example of collaborative methods employed in classrooms teaching. Constructivism and cognitive general perspectives will be examined for offering insights and strategies of improving in science education. Some examples of the benefits of using collaborative techniques and technology in teaching and learning are presented. In particular, aspects of collaborative theories related to knowledge building and the particular ways of constructing shared knowledge are analyzed. Additionally, the roles and the uses of technology in knowledge building pedagogy are discussed as an important way to improve collaboration in science education.

1. Introduction

The challenges students face in learning science have been documented in much of the existing literature. For example, Burbules and Linn (1991) reported that students perceive science as a hard discipline. Nonetheless, constructivists have challenge the content of science curriculum, the teaching approaches, and students interactions in the process of learning science. For a long time and in spite of all these efforts, minimum progress was noticed at a large scale. For instance in 1991, Burbules and Linn pointed out that after more than a decade, the majority of the science education curriculum still remained behaviourist.

There has been ongoing debates on whether science education is going in the right direction or not. As Wenger stated, students are “born of learning but they can also learn not to learn” (Wenger, 2000, p. 230). Arguing against the ideas of pupils being passive receptacles of acquiring knowledge for science, educational researchers tried to affirm new identities for learners by emphasizing the students' active participation in the construction of knowledge. For instance, Pope and Gilbert (1983) considered students as autonomous researchers, while Burbules and Linn (1991) mentioned the term practicing scientists as ways to underscore this point. Gil-Perez et al. (2002) took a more moderate view, considering students as novice researchers.

With all of these efforts and the strategies of trying to empower students to engage in science as an authentic scientific community of researchers, the results are still far from being considered successful. Some of the difficulties that teachers encounter have been reported by Matthews (2002) who noted that teachers “try their best to explain things clearly, to make the use of metaphors, to use demonstrations and practical work to flesh out abstractions, to utilize projects and discussions for involving students in the subject matter and so on. However, they realize that many, if not most, things in science are beyond the experience of students and the capabilities of school laboratories to demonstrate” ( p. 130). Linn (1997) also argued that previous assumptions that critical thinking and general problem solving will make everyone able to solve everything, have failed. Instead, she noticed that although the students were trained and involved in specific strategies, contexts and problems, often students failed.

2. Causes of Failures in Science Education

Science education has often been accused of distorting the scientific process. diSessa (2000) mentioned that teachers still are more interested in “what to teach” than “how to teach”. Roth, McRobbie, Lucas, and Boutonné, (1997) tried to explore causes of failing of high school students in science classrooms to understand teachers' situations. Rothe et al. identified five main categories of deficiencies: a) lack of theoretical background, (b) providing inadequate contexts from other science courses, (c) interference from other demonstrations that had only superficially similitudes with the required solutions, (d) inabilities to represent a coherent representational framework (e) lack of favorable situation to test descriptions and explanations.

From the main distortions founded in science education, Gil-Perez et al. (2002) mentioned the “extreme inductivism”, meaning jumping to a conclusion from few scientific facts and evidence, before appraising other relevant facts. In other words, the authors considered that students often fail to construct an adequate hypothesis and a well grounded and articulated theory. Teaching is also problematic. It is noticed that a rigid view is present, positioning every scientific situation as a linear sequence of steps that must be accomplished. Overall, the scientific progress is oversimplified, being presented as obvious, thereby ignoring previous challenges and efforts of restructuring. A fragmentate perspective is where different problems and domains are treated separately without interdisciplinary perspectives. In this context, science is presented as neutral, elitist and individualistic. Great scientists are socially isolated and their scientific contributions do not have any relationship with society, technology or economy.

Chinn and Malhotra (2001) studied textbook curricula for the purpose of disseminating similarities and differences between science curriculum and authentic scientific works. They evaluated differences in cognitive processes registered in classrooms (simple observations, simple experiments, simple illustrations) and scientific communities such as: generating research questions, planning measures, controlling variables, finding flaws, indirect reasoning, generalizations, reasoning, developing theory, coordinating results and studying reasons. They noticed that usually students are told what questions to use, what variables are measured, and how they are measured. The time allocated in research communities for experiments, building theory and finding flaws is consistent, a very different situation encountering in science classrooms where these processes and the time quotas are shortened. Chinn and Malhotra concluded that classroom approaches in science education are far from authentic efforts developed in scientific research communities. In their attention to build the theory, the science classrooms especially miss the process of acquisition of data that are building the theory. In their efforts for reconciliation of these two types of communities, Chinn and Malhotra's conclusions were skeptical: “There is no way to condense authentic scientific reasoning into a single 40-50 minutes science lesson. Learning authentic scientific reasoning will require a commitment for teachers and schools to spend the time needed to learn reasoning strategies that go beyond simple observation and simple control variable”. (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002, pp. 213) The authors concluded that school inquiry tasks have little in common with authentic science reasoning.

For Perez et al. (2002) science laboratories are viewed as being different from those in scientific community because scientists use data-collection and analysis in real time. Also, the complexity of data involved in science education is of great concern. How much data should students use in order not to oversimplify the building of a theory but also not to let students be overwhelmed by it? Therefore, building an interdisciplinary path in science is an important goal.

3. Constructivism Perspectives in Science Education

The constructivism has been reviewed as being the most major contributor in the developing of educational theory in the last two decades (Matthews, 2002). The main idea behind constructivism is that “understanding is in our interactions with the environment...We cannot talk about what is learned separately from how is learned” (Savery & Duffy, 1995). Matthews (2002) mentioned that “although constructivism started as a theory of learning, it became a theory of teaching, a theory of education, a theory of the origin of ideas, and a theory of both personal knowledge and scientific knowledge” (Matthews, 2002, p.121). He also pointed out the polyvalent domains, directions and values that constructivism had influenced such as learning, teaching, education, cognition, knowledge, science, social, ethical, political or even our worldview. Therefore, constructivism is a major contributor to change the way students can learn and acquire new knowledge.

Piaget and Vygotsky are considered the main pioneers in developing the constructivist theory, though they had wide different opinions about the role of teaching, role of playing, and the role of errors (Pass, 2004). In Piaget's books about child development, young children's ways of inquiry and acquiring knowledge are presented as different radically from those of adults. Also, in the process of teaching, for Piaget, the teacher is only a diagnostician, not an involved person in instruction, while for Vygotsky the teacher might play such an an important role. For Piaget, the interactions with peers are appreciated as producing better experiences than interactions between students and teacher. As to the role of playing, for Piaget the role of playing was only acceptable at an early age while for Vygotsky the role of playing was deemed to provide great experiences at different age levels (Pass, 2004). Another important difference is taking in the role of errors. None of them considered errors as an important role in developing learners’ knowledge. Piaget considers errors as part of learning outcome, establishing a clear distinction from failures. Errors are treated only as intermediary steps, and are considered acceptable. For Vygotsky, failures are happening when the social other (e.g. the teacher) is not doing properly the job. While Piaget considers errors as acceptable, for Vygotsky these are something damaging the educational process, painful and highly recommended to be avoided.

Based on different emphasis, today there are many types of constructivism: individual, social, radical, postmodernist, constructionist, critical, etc. Having so different facets, inevitably triggered there are researchers who criticized the constructivism from different grounds. Nola (1997) criticized the constructivism for its confusions that are in place. Therefore, he asked to differentiate between the epistemic and empirical aspects of constructivism, between pedagogical and psychological aspects.

Staver (1998) defends constructivism by arguing for its consistency and soundness but the learners should be aware that the truth presented in this theory should not be rigidly required as coherence. Constructivism is a rejection of solipsism and supports modern approaches from the modern neurophysiological theory reviewing the brain as a parallel data processing organ in which meaning making takes place in both individuals and communities. Therefore, the constructivism is it still considered the major contributor in education: “constructivism has become education's version of the 'grand unified theory' plus a bit more” (Matthews, 2002, p. 121).

1. 4. Contributions Made by Learners During Science Education Classrooms

Knowledge acquisition should make students negotiate content for being citizens and future scientists. In the dynamics of acquisition, technology plays an important role and have a good impact when the designers work with them but are difficult for use by teachers, in general.“In studying the science learner, scientists have shifted from a search for general laws to a focus on describing the process of knowledge acquisition”(Linn, 1997, p. 413).

In their scientific community, people/scientists play two main roles: constructors and critiques. Understanding scientific ideas requires not only facts and constructing a theory but also how we critique the existing theories (Roth & Lee, 2003). It is very important to consider how we criticize others and ourselves. Furthermore, Linn (1997) encouraged teachers to help students to build self-criticism by flexibly negotiating the authority inside classrooms: “Instructors help students view themselves as monitoring their own understanding and identifying what they know and do not know by encouraging self-criticism” (p. 412). Science courses are viewed as very difficult because of stereotypical norms that have influenced the distribution of capacity to learn science in class.

Roth and Lee (2003) mentioned that students do not have to learn and know the same set of basic concepts. More importantly, the emergence of basic scientific literacy will come as a collective property. A lived science and technology requires not only “hard” science but also collective expertize from social sciences, humanities, political science and law.

Carey and Smith (1993) suggested a curricular plan that would emphasize important skills in scientific practice such as: observation, classification, measurement, conducing controlled experiments and constructing data tables and graphs of experimental results. Theory-building approach in science together with a reflection associated during this process. Linn (1997) mentioned that as complexity increase, more fields are involved in the inter-disciplinary dialog, revealing that the importance of the efficacy and the involvement of the partnerships have become higher. In science education, the separation between laboratory and class often take place. This could have some positive impacts by making experimentation more accessible but the process of knowledge integration is put in difficulty. It is very important for science classrooms to help students integrate observations with theory, to help reconcile different and sometimes contradictory explanations and to integrate them into coherent ones.

Turkle and Papert (1990) revealed that a top-down method or planning approach is not always superior to other methods of thinking. They noticed that sciences tend to appreciate more abstract thought at the detriment of concrete thoughts. Turkle and Papert argued that, in contrast with Piaget where concrete thinking is only associated with child or immature thinking, constructionism is evaluating equally both abstract and concrete thoughts. Kafai (2006) considered that objects are very important for science education. These are things-to-think-with.

For Linn (1997), the problem of attracting more students and enable them to be actively involved in science education has to be viewed as a separate goal of making instruction more effective. Carey and Smith (1993) considered that during their formal school, people master only a small part from the scientific knowledge required. Yet, they are asked later to adopt public position about more difficult topics that they were able to master.

Smith, diSessa and Roschelle (1993) were interested to find how the convergence of conceptual changes happened in spite of naive, or alternative misconceptions. The tole played by flawed ideas was found to be complex:

Different sources-internal, social, and physical-must generate feedback on repeated efforts to act, control, and understand, and this feedback must be evaluated. Functionality implies that misconceptions, at least those reported to be widespread, carry with them some contexts of successful use. Taking this principle seriously provides an excellent heuristic to discover the origins of novice conceptions.' The constructivist position that one learns from trying what one currently knows casts functionality as underlying and framing continuity. But functionality is also constrained by continuity:Judgments of the success of any conception depend on the learner's existing knowledge and criteria of sense making. (p.148)

5. Knowledge Building Pedagogy in Science education

This section describes main concepts of knowledge building theory. The contributions of knowledge building theory in science education are also presented. Following these discussions, I will provide some insights into how technology can be used to assist knowledge building classrooms in science education.

1. The Knowledge Building Theory

A great number of educators have taken new approaches on reforming the educational system, by having a “knowledge of knowledge” approach. This advancement of knowledge has a great emphasis on collaborative inquiry rather than an individual inquiry and reviews the production of knowledge as essential for society. One of the major contributors was the knowledge building theory, initially started by the research of Bereiter and Scardamalia at the end of eighties.

Knowledge building theory strongly emphasizes ways of encouraging students to cooperate and take personal responsibilities in the learning process. It is concerned with enhancing the complexity of approaches, the increase of the existing level of knowledge, and epistemic agency level. This evolution is made through specific discourse oriented to improve the existing ideas, and to diversify and democratize the personal contributions. “Knowledge building evolve as curriculum evolve” (Lamon, Reeve & Scardamalia, 2001). Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) introduced the progressive problem solving approach concept as a way of progressively developing the interactions and the discourse by the reinvesting of mental resources. Technology is considered an important ally in helping students to collaborate, interact, communicate and coordinate their efforts to work as a group in the classroom.

There are differences between knowledge building as it develops in a classroom and a professional research community. First, it is about the focus area. A research community focuses in a specific area, while a knowledge building classroom is interested in improving the knowledge of the entire community, and the knowledge area becomes the whole world. The second difference is that the research community is expected to produce new knowledge while the knowledge building classrooms communities produce results and knowledge that are new only for participants’ themselves. This theory “involves students not only developing knowledge-building competencies but also coming to see themselves and their work as part of the civilization-wide effort to advance knowledge frontiers” (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006, p.97).

The proposed alternative culture of schooling is Scardamalia and Bereiter's (1994) Knowledge-Building Community model. A Knowledge-Building Community is a group of individuals who work collaboratively to advance the knowledge of the collective (e.g., a university research team). Scardamalia and Bereiter affirmed that the "research team" model may be an effective one for schools. Over the past two decades, the researchers have explored this model in different settings from kindergarten to graduate classrooms. An important part of the investigation is the development and the ongoing refinement of Knowledge Forum (KF) the new version of Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments(CSILE), a networked computer environment designed to support the "research team" approach.

Hewitt (1996) studied a four-year-period of transformation of a normal class into a knowledge building classroom. He discussed the Knowledge Building Community model decentralization of the classroom based activity in two ways: a) by changing the way of creating knowledge from teacher to student from a unilateral flow to a multidimensional way, and b) by taking a collaborative stance for the educational classroom process. He found that the culture of class itself is accountable for many of today's failures in schools. These failures cannot be properly addressed through minor changes. Therefore, the fundamental rethinking of learning should be reconsidered based on redesigning the techniques promoting understanding and the roles that teacher and student have in the classroom. Also, a proposed alternative is establishing Knowledge-Building Communities. Hewitt described a four-year transformation of a class into a Knowledge-Building Community. After an initial period required for accommodation, when the productivity in writing and discussing notes in CSILE was low, the research showed evidence that gradually students started to be productive in using CSILE. Learning the software environment was successful and helped in improving the communication among students.

Examining generalized strategies in cross-domain learning, Ogilvie (1990) designed a study with 25 subjects from the sixth grade. Students were encouraged to participate in three new learning experiences. They learned some new motor and cognitive tasks over a six-month period such as: a) juggling, b) learning about the systems of the body and c) computer games over an hour-long period. Motivation, learning style, achievement, and performance were measured for each student. Students were frequently interviewed during the learning process. The analysis revealed that students tended to use the same style and strategies for all three domains. In addition, students who had an intentional learning style were more effective and performed better than students who were not. Deep planning appeared to be as strong a predictor of learning as motivation and achievement. Elaborated rehearsal and self-dialogue were revealed as helpful for students, helping them to be more effective learners.

Other studies have reported that knowledge building contributes to teachers professional development selecting a knowledge building path. Brett (2002), focusing on finding ways on online engagements in mathematics for preservice teachers, analyzed the patterns of engagement/ disengagement for twenty math-anxious elementary candidates and offered an online program support for participants. Noticing that online environments do not always offer positive experiences to learners, she found that subjects who had been successful in social experiences and in subject-related experiences benefited more from receiving online learning support. Also, the online patterns of interactions changed little over time for those who contributed either with too many or too few contributions in discussion. Therefore, epistemic agency and identity in community are strongly required for a successful online engagement.

1. Knowledge Building Contributions in Science Education

A great amount of research have reported the relevance and the great contributions of knowledge building theory in science education. In a research studying a sixth grade science class, Bereiter, Scardamalia, Cassells and Hewitt (1997) recommended that science education should avoid the old way of considering learning science as an inflexible effort towards the “ultimate truth”. Instead, persistently improving present ideas is a preferable strategy. It was found that respecting the basic commitments for constantly improving themselves, scientific progress could be realized in elementary classrooms. Also, Bereiter (2002), in an article about sustained innovation found that radical innovations are less probable to succeed in education. This can be attributed to the paradigm of innovation, which always requires a specific limit of effort and time. Noticing a limited degree of novelty in successful educational attempts, Bereiter raised a warning about limited capacities of classrooms to adjust themselves to new reforms.

Another early research who used a knowledge-building approach in science education was Rukavina (1991). She developed two research studies for sixth grade students in science. The researcher split the group of students in three parts: advanced learners, average learners and average learners with assistance. She proved that knowledge acquisition promote better understanding than direct teaching. Comparing advanced learners and average learners, she proved that advanced learners more frequently display a knowledge building approach than average learners. In the process of learning science through knowledge building approach, students build a knowledge space in which they engaged in problem solving actions, using both general learning and domain related learning processes, that were applied to new achieved information. In the second study, using a intervention approach, she compared the knowledge group students with the control group students. The results proved that using a knowledge building approach student had few misconceptions in their achievements.

Chan (1993) investigated knowledge construction and conceptual change analyzing how high-school students processed contradictory approaches in biology classrooms. There were 108 students randomly sampled, from grades 9 to 12. The study compared knowledge building pedagogy with non-collaborative and direct approaches in classrooms, investigating what happened when students are confronted with contrasting information. The results revealed that exposing students to contradictory information was not sufficient unless students had a knowledge building approach in learning science. The results highlighted the importance of self-constructive activity in order to advance in science.

In his doctoral dissertation, Hakkarainen (1998) did five studies of processing inquiry in science education in two classrooms across a three-year period. He found that in one classroom where the teacher provided a strong pedagogical support, students' communications received and enhanced in peer interactions, which ultimately induced the advancement of explanation efforts. Hakkarainen considered that teacher's guidance can make students capable to produce intuitive and meaningful explanations.

Yasnitsky (2006) studied the dynamics and the nature of the discourse in science education in a third grade classroom. Based on three of the Knowledge Building principles introduced by Scardamalia (2000): 1) community knowledge, collective responsibility; 2) real ideas, authentic problems, idea diversity; and 3) idea improvement. The discourse produced by a science classroom in the Knowledge Forum was analyzed. It was noticed that during the time the complexity of the inquiries and the length of the treads increased. Elaborating and participating in different explanations students were able to make consistent progress both individually and collectively.

In science education, van Aalst (1999) designed a model called Learning for Knowledge Building (LKB). The researcher tested his model on two studies on a 5/6 grade science classrooms using CSILE, based on the content analysis from the notes' databases and the analysis of the curriculum coverage. The findings shows that students who participated with more notes to the CSILE database were more probable to improve their scientific merit of their notes, diversified the problem contexts and eventually tended to dominate the discussions in which they participated. Also, the role of the teacher was explored.

Forrester (2007) explored epistemological aspects of participation for 27 students registered in two online courses. A pre-test and post-test essays were assigned to participants. The use of dialectal reasoning, justification, and changes in level of epistemological understanding were measured. Analytik Toolkit (ATK) tools were used in order to analyze students' participations. Results indicated that participants with a high participation in belief mode epistemology proved more metacognitive activity and were more collaborative, often achieved the best level of understanding and were more likely to use sophisticated reasoning. As anticipated, design mode epistemology---a primary indication of knowledge building---was underrepresented even in the highest levels of belief mode epistemology. Widespread change occurred in the acceptance of peers as sources of knowledge. This has significant implications for the practice of teaching. Participation patterns did not depend on number of graduate courses taken, number of previous online courses, nor previous familiarity with the course platform.

A study on learning behavior of 21 high school students from two advanced biology classes, learning natural history with a rich database environment was developed by Fogg (1995). Subjects contributed independently with research projects using a database program containing mammal natural history. They were interviewed regularly to measure progresses and learning strategies and at the end they were tested. There were some predictors measured in this study such as prior knowledge of the database content, possession of the mental model and intentional learning.

The research revealed that the level of intentional learning contributed to student gains in attitude, content proficiency and performance on higher-order questions. Initially, intentional learning was seen as predictor for student performances. The analysis revealed that, during the independent projects, intentional learners did not show any differences in scheduled tasks of the project. While students were cooperating, trying and experiencing during the class, for academic grades purposes they used only safe routines, without experimenting and collaborating. Fogg(1995) concluded that intentional learning skills are useful for database exploration, but a supportive instructional environment that encourages exploration and risk-taking will be necessary for worthwhile, original learning.

A research on classrooms' interaction in an elementary science class, where students were using CSILE was developed by Lipponen, Rahikainen, Hakkarainen, and Palonen (2002). The study was in Finland and students had a mixed method approach. The data was analyzed using social network analysis and content analysis. Qualitative data explored students’ participations rates, density of interactions, and the quality of their discourse. The quantitative data was used to measure descriptive and statistic data from social network analysis. The findings revealed a high density of interaction among participants having a high use of CSILE software. There were, however, substantial differences in the students' participation rates. The results also indicated that one student occupied a central position, and two students an isolated position in the CSILE mediated interaction. The study further revealed that the CSILE mediated discussion was composed of number of short discussion threads. The culture of CSILE mediated discourse and collaboration can be defined as follows; on topic, neutral, and providing information to others' comments or questions.

3. 6. Final Conclusions

Reviewing the research in science education, there is no easy way to empower students' creativity. As Ford and Wargo (2006) put it “teachers having sat in classrooms for 16 years have 'ingrained' ways of teaching” (p.154). With all of these, knowledge building pedagogy can be considered as an reliable way that might boost students'

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