5
The Interplay of First-Hand and Second-Hand Investigations to Model and Support the Development of Scientific Knowledge and Reasoning
It's pretty cool because we get to share our thinking with the class and we get to also share Lesley's thinking with the class.
—(Kenji, May, 1998)
I like to listen to what other scientists do, like Lesley Park. Especially when she started getting more exact.
—(Emily, May, 1998)
These quotes are taken from the remarks of two fourth graders who have been engaged in investigations of light and are commenting on their experiences using notebook entries authored by a fictitious scientist, named Lesley Park, who is documenting her own investigations of light. In this chapter, we consider the nature and role of text designed to advance young children's thinking as they engage in scientific inquiry.
Inquiry is a complex form of thinking that has been developed over thousands of years. It is a cultural legacy that previous generations have imparted to us to employ and revise. From a sociocultural perspective, it is a “cultural tool” (Wertsch, 1998) of a psychological nature, an approach to reasoning that others have found useful. This is not, however, the perspective from which inquiry is generally approached in the worlds of teachers and students. Inquiry is often equated with discovery, or inquiry is framed in a manner that suggests that it is synonymous with activity based, hands-on engagement in investigative activity. The notion that inquiry is discovery is problematic when one considers the impossibility that children will come to meaningful understandings of the nature of scientific thinking simply through the process of interacting with materials and phenomena (see also Brown & Campione, 1994). Furthermore, the notion that inquiry must be exclusively activity based is problematic because, in fact, much of what we know about scientific reasoning has been acquired through the thinking and experiences of others; that is, through learning in a second-hand way. Frequently, although not exclusively, this second-hand learning can be facilitated with the use of text.
Text has generally suffered neglect on the part of the science education community while receiving more attention from the reading and literacy community. Although reading researchers have undertaken vigorous programs of research regarding certain issues related to science text (e.g., students' learning from refutational text), this research has not typically been situated in the context of science curriculum and pedagogy. Hence, the text used is seldom studied in the context of everyday classroom use; the dependent measures seldom reflect the goals that are represented in the science standards documents; and, there is little attention to the integration of text with other modes of experiencing and learning science.
In addition to the argument framed earlier regarding the significant role that second-hand investigations with text can play in advancing science learning, there are at least three other compelling reasons to argue for research related to the study of text in elementary science instruction. First, national standards documents include the recommendation that students “learn how to access scientific information from books, periodicals, videos … and evaluate and interpret the information they have acquired from these resources” (National Research Council, 1996, p. 45). Furthermore, these reform documents urge that teachers assume an inquiry approach as they guide students in “acquiring and interpreting information” from text (p. 31). These recommendations place challenging demands on classroom teachers, particularly elementary teachers who are unaccustomed to using informational text (Hiebert & Fisher, 1990), much less to using text to promote inquiry. Although the reform documents hint at the use of text as a default experience when students are unable to experience phenomena in a first-hand fashion, we are, in fact, interested in ways that second-hand experiences with text can; (a) prepare students for first-hand experiences in very powerful ways, (b) effectively extend firsthand experiences, and (c) provide a common inquiry that advances students' conceptual understanding in significant ways.
Second, the reform documents suggest that one mark of scientific literacy is the ability to critically read informational text. As the research of Norris and Phillips (1994) demonstrates, even students who experienced advanced level science courses (i.e., high school seniors who had taken four science courses), struggled to be critical of popular science reports and failed to be discriminating regarding truth statements, ascribing higher truth values to statements than were warranted by the information provided. Clearly the competence to understand and critically analyze text will not be developed without careful and systematic attention to cultivating the skills and dispositions to approach science text in a critical fashion throughout the grades.
An additional motivation for the study of text in science instruction is particular to the elementary grades. In this information age, it is well recognized that the attainment of informational literacy is central to achievement, or even to survival, in securing a place in advanced schooling, in one's job, and in one's community. Despite this fact, American schools have failed to develop effective and enduring informational reading and writing skills for many students, particularly those from traditionally disenfranchised social groups (Applebee, Langer, Mullis, Latham, & Gentile, 1994). Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin (1990) argued that the well-documented “fourth-grade slump” can be explained in terms of the difficulties that students experience with informational text. One likely explanation for this difficulty is the paucity of opportunities students have had to learn from and about informational text (Hiebert & Fisher, 1990; Pappas, 1991).
In this chapter, we describe the design, conduct, and outcomes of a program of research that is focused on students' and teachers' use of text in the context of guided inquiry science instruction. We begin with a discussion of related research and continue with a brief description of the professional development context in which our research has been conducted. This is followed by a description of an observational study in which we examined the practices of an expert elementary classroom teacher who incorporated text in her inquiry instruction. This research contributed to the foundation of the next phase of our research program, which entailed the development and study of the use of an innovative genre of text—text that was written as a scientist's notebook and was specifically designed to support children and teachers to approach text as an inquiry. We then proceed to describe an experimental study comparing student learning from two forms of text. One form was the innovative genre, and the second was a considerate nonrefutational expository text. The experimental study is followed by the description of a naturalistic, observational study of classroom use of the innovative text by fourth graders and their teachers. We conclude with a discussion of issues that have emerged in the course of this program of research.
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT TEXT IN SCIENCE?
If we conceive of the knowledge base regarding science text in terms of three intersecting circles, with one circle representing text features, a second representing student use of text, and a third representing text in context, there are two circles that have been fairly well developed (text features, student use of text), one that is sparse (text in context), and the intersection of these three circles is virtually empty. Studies of naturally occurring science text offer a dismal picture of material that is characterized as incomplete in the provision of explanations (Lloyd & Mitchell, 1989), and sparse with regard to transitions and other devices useful to attaining cohesion (Farris, Kissinger, & Thompson, 1988; Woodward & Noell, 1991). The poor state of affairs regarding naturally occurring text could, in part, be addressed by the research that has been conducted to examine the relative benefits of designing science text with specific features.
For example, there have been numerous studies (reported in a meta-analysis by Guzetti, Snyder, & Glass, 1992) that suggest that refutational expository text, that is, text that explicitly identifies and refutes misconceptions, is more effective (particularly when it is written in a considerate fashion) than is nonrefutational text. However, it is seldom the case that widely available science text has been written in this style; researchers typically generate very short and focused segments of text for the purpose of investigating the effectiveness of refutational text.
One manipulation of text that has captured the interest of researchers is the insertion of embedded questions within the text. For example, Leonard (1987) studied the efficacy of placing questions at the beginning of paragraphs in a college biology text, and calling attention to these questions through the use of an array of devices (use of upper case vs. underlining), when compared with a no-question text. Leonard observed that students who studied from the text with the embedded questions performed significantly better on tests of immediate recall than students in the no-question condition; however, there were no differences on the assessments that were administered 4 weeks later to determine maintenance of the information read. Balluerka (1995) studied the differential effects of providing an advance organizer, engaging students in the generation of an advance organizer, and the provision of illustrations highlighting main ideas in the text. The outcomes were assessed using two types of tasks; the recall of information and the application of information. The findings suggested that illustrations of key ideas facilitated the recall of information, whereas the deeper processing in which students engaged to generate outlines, enhanced comprehension.
Another line of research examines what students do as they read and study from science text. Generally, this research suggests that students, left to their own devices, do not know how to study and learn from scientific expository text (Craig & Yore, 1996; Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1988; Otero & Companario, 1990). For example, even fairly sophisticated high school physics students in the study by Boyle and Maloney (1991) did not effectively use explicit information regarding Newton's third law, provided them via text, even though it would have facilitated their problem solving regarding the application of forces on an object.
Attempts to teach students to engage more effectively with text through the use of strategies has produced mixed findings. For example, Pearson (1991), working with college students, found that while self-questioning enhanced performance on assessments that measure the short-term recall of information, it did not reliably enhance long-term retention of scientific concepts. In contrast, Woloshyn, Paivio, & Pressley (1994) observed that upper elementary students who engaged in elaborative interrogation in which they made supportive inferences in the course of elaborating on new information, performed better on assessments of conceptual understanding, whether or not their prior conceptions matched scientifically accurate conceptions, when compared with student selected strategies.
Generally, the majority of research regarding text in science has been conducted at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Much of this research has been conducted with the use of contrived text, and little of it has been conducted in the context of naturally occurring science instruction. One line of research that is more closely aligned with the research reported in this chapter is the work of Guthrie and Gaskins and their colleagues (Gaskins, et. al., 1994; Guthrie, McGough, Bennett, & Rice, 1996). In a program of research entitled, Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction, they investigated the enactment of year-long curricula in which elementary-aged students and their teachers pursued the study of conceptual issues of the students' choosing. In the course of their inquiry regarding these topics, students are supported to find relevant resources, learn how to use these resources, and learn how to communicate their learning to others. The evaluation of this approach has been conducted using broad ranging assessments that include breadth and amount of reading activity, student motivation for reading, cognitive strategies for reading, as well as the attainment of conceptual knowledge (defined very generally). This is a very ambitious program of research that clearly will inform a large set of significant issues regarding the role of text in inquiry instruction; however, the grain size of the analyses are such that they contribute little to our understanding of the specific nature of the texts students are using, how teachers are mediating students' use of these texts, and what understandings children are achieving that can inform our thinking about the role of text in advancing both conceptual understanding and scientific reasoning.
In the next section of this chapter, we describe a program of research that is at the intersection of text features, student and teacher use of text, and text in the context of inquiry instruction in elementary science teaching. The program began with naturalistic observations of the ways in which elementary teachers, engaged in guided inquiry teaching, used second-hand investigations via text in the course of their teaching. This was followed by a descriptive study of one-third grade teacher for whom we designed a text to complement the first-hand investigation in which her class was engaged. When we began this program of research, we had a fairly clear idea of the nature and role of second-hand investigations; however, our work with teachers was designed to refine our thinking and to inform our understanding of how we could best support teachers to conjoin first- and second-hand investigations. Indeed, this initial phase of the research led us to the design of an innovative text genre to scaffold children's and teachers' use of text in an inquiry fashion. The second phase of the research was a quasi- experimental study designed to compare the outcomes of using the innovative text with the outcomes of a more traditional text. Finally, we engaged in an instructional study in which two fourth-grade teachers used the innovative texts in the course of a program of study on How Light Interacts With Objects. We begin by describing the professional development context in which this research occurred.
THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT SUPPORTING THIS PROGRAM OF RESEARCH
Before we proceed with the description of our research program, a word is in order regarding the professional development context in which this work is taking place. This context is important because it afforded us the opportunity to conduct this research informed by teachers' experiences. For the past 3 years, we worked with a group of K through 5 teachers1 who joined this professional development project for the purpose of learning how to effectively teach science from a guided inquiry perspective. Our work together involved biweekly meetings during the school year, week-long institutes during summers, and many hours working alongside these teachers in their classrooms. We refer to the context in which we conducted our research as The Guided Inquiry supporting Multiple Literacies (GIsML) Community of Practice. Informed by sociocultural theory regarding the interdependence of social and individual processes in the coconstruction of knowledge (John-Steiner & Mann, 1996; Rogoff, 1994), this professional development project was designed to provide occasions for interaction, joint deliberation, and the collective pursuit of shared goals, particularly with regard to the teaching of science in the elementary grades.2 (For a complete description of this professional development effort, see Palincsar, Magnusson, Marano, Ford, & Brown, 1998.) The teachers represented 14 schools in six districts, one of which serves a rural community, two of which serve an urban community, and three of which serve primarily suburban communities.
Our focus was on identifying practices that were consistent with a particular orientation to the teaching of science in the elementary grades. Informed by the research of Grossman (1990), we used the notion of orientation to refer to an overarching conception of how to teach a particular subject. An orientation can be thought of as a conceptual map that guides decision making regarding curriculum, instruction, student understanding, and assessment. The orientation to which we refer is reflected in the heuristic presented in Fig. 5.1. (For a more complete description of this heuristic and the instructional implications, see Magnusson & Palincsar, 1995). The heuristic is organized according to phases of instruction set within a particular problem space, that is, a guiding question that is broad and identifies a general conceptual terrain (e.g., How does light interact with matter? Why do things sink and float?). Inquiry proceeds through cycles of investigation guided by specific questions (e.g., How does light interact with mirrors) or by a particular phenomenon (e.g., shaping a ball of clay to hold the most weight). Integral to this orientation is the conception of the classroom as a community of inquiry (cf. The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1994; Wells, 1995). Hence, the investigations and documentation of data gathered in the course of the investigation are conducted in pairs or small groups. Furthermore, a critical feature in the instruction is the reporting phase, during which the investigative teams share their data, speak to the evidence they have gathered to support or refute extant claims, and contribute new claims for the class's consideration.
FIG. 5.1. The GIsML heuristic.
The curved lines represent a cycling phenomenon in which students experience the same phase repeatedly in the same or different contexts. This recursive aspect of instruction is required to promote meaningful learning, particularly with respect to scientific inquiry. For example, one needs sufficient experiences examining natural relationships among phenomena before one can meaningfully test explanations for these phenomena.
In the course of GIsML instruction, students and teachers participate in two forms of investigation. Through first-hand investigations, children have experiences related to the phenomenon(a) they are investigating. In the course of second-hand investigations, children consult text for the purpose of learning about others' interpretations.
The ultimate goal of GIsML instruction is to support children's learning of scientific understandings, and to enable students to experience, understand, and appreciate the ways in which these understandings have evolved by using the tools, language, and ways of reasoning that are characteristic of scientific literacy (Driver, Osoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994; Lemke, 1990; White & Frederiksen, 1998).
During the 1996–1997 school year, the focus of the GIsML Community was on the design, enactment, and evaluation of first-hand investigations. In the spring of 1997, we piloted second-hand investigations in the classroom of a third-grade teacher who is a member of the Community, and in the summer of 1997, we formally introduced the idea of secondhand investigations to the Community. In the next section, we describe the outcomes of this exploratory phase of our research.
DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH ON SECOND-HAND INVESTIGATIONS
Prior research (e.g., Shymanski, Yore, & Good, 1991) has suggested that when teachers embrace activity-based, project-driven, or guided inquiry practices, text falls into a lacuna; however, this research has been conducted via survey and has not entailed direct observations of teachers who have been supported in the planning and enactment of guided inquiry teaching. As the teachers engaged in the GIsML Community of Practice enacted first-hand investigations with their students, we were interested in how teachers' thinking about the use of text would be influenced by their inquiry experiences. We observed that although these teachers did not systematically introduce the use of text in these investigations, several teachers did in fact acquire topically related books from the library. One teacher used a folk tale to introduce her first graders to the study of shadows, and there were many ways in which the teachers used print literacy, other than prepared text. For example, children's “wonderings” and class claims were posted throughout the room, and students were frequently asked to make and subsequently refer to notebook entries.
Conversations with the teachers about the role that second-hand investigations might play in inquiry provided helpful insights into why other researchers have reported the absence of text in inquiry teaching. Consensus quickly emerged among the teachers that there was a risk inherent in using text to the extent that children might defer to the authority of the text, seeking answers from the text when, in fact, the children themselves had a key role to play in working toward explanations and were indeed quite capable of generating their own “answers” in the course of investigating phenomena. The teachers cautioned against introducing text early in the investigation and urged that text be used following a significant amount of first-hand inquiry. Hence, the preponderance of teachers' ideas suggested that text be used not to supplant children's inquiry and discourse, but rather to extend it (for the full report of focus group conversations with teachers, see Palincsar & Magnusson, 1997).
In preparation for the professional development work that we did at the conclusion of the 1997–1998 school year, we asked Fran S, a third-grade teacher in the GIsML Community, who was well recognized for her expertise as a language arts teacher, if she would be willing to pilot the use of second-hand investigations in GIsML instruction. As a research group, we had now observed 17 iterations of GIsML teaching on the topic of light, which gave us a fairly informed understanding about the role that text might play in this program of study. Ms. S' class first engaged in a week of first-hand investigations of light, which proceeded in the following manner. As the engagement activity, Ms. S asked her students to generate a list regarding what they knew about light. Based on their observations, the class next developed a set of claims regarding light that they would investigate with the use of light boxes and an array of materials, such as mirrors, translucent objects, objects of various colors, and prisms. Working in pairs, students then selected a claim from the list and investigated it with the materials. As they investigated, the students collected data in their notebooks to be presented to the remainder of the class during reporting. There were two iterations of the cycle of inquiry during this week-long investigation.
In this next portion, we describe, in some detail, how Ms. S led her students in this second-hand investigation. We do this because, although we already had a number of ideas regarding second-hand investigations, the experiences of this class were influential in our thinking about the features of text and the features of a second-hand investigation that would be most consonant with the GIsML orientation. The text Ms. S used was specifically designed to reflect the experiences the students had garnered in their first-hand investigations; making reference to familiar concepts and using established vocabulary (e.g., absorption).3 The question guiding this descriptive study was: What does the interplay of first- and second-hand investigations look like when a class is using nonrefutational expository text?
To prepare the students for the second-hand investigation, which occurred a week and a half after the conclusion of a related first-hand investigation, Ms. S engaged them in recalling the claims for which they had not gathered sufficient evidence in their first-hand investigation. She also elicited those claims that the students indicated could not be investigated first-hand. As the students volunteered, Ms. S recorded their responses on the board. Having reviewed the students' first-hand investigations before class (with the use of student notebooks and posters of class claims), she was able to prompt questions/claims that the students did not initially remember.
Day 1 of Second-hand Investigation
Ms. S: Now, a week and a half ago, when we were doing our investigation of light, during that whole week a lot of questions came up that we found we couldn't answer with the materials we had in the classroom. Frequently people would say, “I guess we need to do that in a second-hand investigation.” Do you remember hearing that?
Students: Yeah.
Ms. S: Ok, what were some of those things that were unanswered or that we felt we needed to do different kinds of investigations with? I thought I'd list a few on the board, just to keep a record of it. What were some of the things? Kyla?
Kyla: Um, the speed of light.
Ms. S: Ok. [writes statement on the board] I'll just make some quick notes on the board. So, speed of light was one. What else? Evan?
Evan: If light is the fastest thing in the solar system.
…
Katie: [whispering to Sarah, then growing louder] Water splitting light as well as a prism.
male student off camera: Well, that's not a second-hand investigation.
Katie: I know but we didn't—
Ms. S: But we didn't answer that question. Ok [writing on board], water splitting light into colors. Ok, what else? David.
David: Well, we said this one, the person who said this one said it sorta messed up but we said light absorbs black. They tried to do that one but they said it sorta messed up a bit.
Ms. S: OK, is our claim about black absorbs or soaks up light?
David: Yeah. Some people tried it and they couldn't get it to work.
…
Ms. S: Ok. [writing on board] White reflects light. Ok, so we weren't sure about that. Someone tried to, to prove that but we weren't sure about that one. Nick?
Nick: I bet black holes are called black holes because they suck in light. Black.
Ms. S: OK, so that was another thing we couldn't really do a first-hand investigation of. Thank goodness.
Students [off camera]: Yeah … Yeah ‘cause you can't like…
Ms. S: Ok, anything else? I want you to think a little longer. I have a few things I jotted down too when I was trying to recall. Actually, David Brown, you mentioned a couple of things that you couldn't investigate first hand. [David B. has no response] Let's see if I have them written down. Oh, how about light as a source of energy?
Katie: Oh, yeah. We kinda did that one.
Ms. S: How did we do that, Katie?
Katie: We put like a thermometer [and we found]…
Student [off camera]: That's heat.
Katie: that it was a source of heat.
Nick: But heat isn't energy.
Ms. S: And you thought that heat might prove that it was a source of energy. But we had some disagreement about whether—Nick—we had some disagreement about that. So can we put that down, that we're not sure about that yet? And we might need more. Ok. [writing on board] Light is a source of energy. Ok. Anything else? Ooo, Kevin and Ilya, I remember some controversy in your presentation. Do you remember what that was about?….
Kevin: [reading from journal] Light can be reflected by a mirror but not by any object other than a mirror.
Ms. S: So, light isn't reflected by any object but a mirror. Does that say kind of what you're saying there? [students are talking, “No,” some general rumbling] And we had a controversy about that. People had different opinions. [writing on board] Light isn't reflected by objects other than mirrors. All right, let's see if I have anything else here. [checking notes] I remember another one. We actually had a long discussion about whether things that, I think you were talking about this, Julian, and you were, Nick—about things that are, excuse me, are all things that glow hot?
Julian: Oh, yeah.
Ms. S: Remember that discussion?
Julian: Everyone was talking about that.
Ms. S: Hmmm. [writing on board] [Aside: Nick, whatever you're eating, you need to stop, ok? Unless you have enough to share.] Ok, and the shadow business. Ayaka had some evidence that we couldn't find at the last minute. Why do some objects make darker shadows than other objects? Do you think we needed some, some more information about that? [no response from Ayaka]
Student [off camera]: Ayaka didn't have hers so we couldn't really discuss it.
Ms. S: Right. [writing on board] Some objects make darker shadows than others. Ok, let's take a look at the article.
After this conversation, Ms. S read the first part of the following, text, to the class.
Light and Objects
Everything that we see fits into one of two groups. In one group are objects that give off light. They are called luminous objects. Light bulbs, the sun, flashlights are examples of luminous objects. The other group of objects do not give off light. We can see them only because light from luminous objects bounces off them and travels to our eyes. These objects are called non-luminous objects.
After reading this portion of the text to the class, Ms. S paused and asked the students to name some luminous objects in their immediate environment. The students offered several other examples, including objects and animals that were not in the classroom environment, and also discussed whether mirrors are luminous or nonluminous They decided that mirrors are nonluminous and Ms. S summarized the discussion, focusing on the luminous objects in their immediate environment, and then asked them to name nonluminous objects. The students had no trouble naming nonluminous objects, and were enthusiastic about this. As Ms. S attempted to continue on to the next paragraph, David made an observation regarding what they had just read about luminous and nonluminous objects and how it related to their claims, still posted on the board.
David: Before we said that light isn't reflected by objects other than mirrors but the article says that light reflects off others so we can see them so we know that claim's wrong.
Ms. S: And I think we'll get maybe some more information about this too as we move along. All right, next paragraph.
When light travels from a luminous object to your eyes it has to travel through air. It may travel through other materials, too. Light travels through some materials differently than others.
At this point Ms. S stopped and asked the children what they already knew in relation to that segment of text. The students remembered that one of their classmates, Ayaka, had attempted to shine light through various different types of material, including wood, glass, metal, and a paper milk carton, and that her claim was that some objects make darker shadows than others. Ms. S encouraged them to look for more information regarding this claim as they read the next paragraph.
Light travels straight through objects that are transparent, or clear, such as glass windows or pop bottles. Because the light is traveling straight through the transparent object, we can see objects on the other side of the transparent object very clearly. Sometimes, only some light passes through objects. These objects, like plastic milk jugs, are called translucent. If you look through a plastic milk jug, you won't see anything clearly on the other side, but you might notice that some light is shining through. Objects that don't allow any light to pass through are called opaque. Books and walls are opaque. We can't see anything on the other sides of these objects.
Ms. S stopped at the end of this paragraph and directed the students' attention back to the list of claims on the board:
Ms. S: So, David, you said that there was one up here that this kind of proves as correct.
David: Oh, Ayaka's. Because it said that some lets light come in differently, more light and less light. Less light would probably be a lighter shadow and more light would be a darker shadow.
After this, Ms. S asked the students to name examples of transparent, translucent, and opaque objects in their immediate environment. The students did not have a problem naming transparent objects but the identification of translucent objects proved more elusive. The difference between transparent and translucent objects sparked a lot of discussion as students pointed out the different characteristics of objects on the room, especially the computer screens.
Ms. S: Translucent seems a bit harder. Evan?
Evan: Um, the computer screen.
Student [off camera]: That's what I was gonna say.
Jung Ho: That's more transparent than translucent.
Nick: Yeah, or else you'd see the light.
Ms. S: Guys. Jung Ho, why do you think that?
Jung Ho: Well, ‘cause then you wouldn't be able to see through the screen that easily. You can see yourself.
Ms. S: That's kind of a puzzle, but I think the screen itself must at least be transparent.
David: Well, it can be, well, maybe some screen savers are, like that one for instance [points across room] is translucent and it has a picture that lets out some of the light not all of it. But when you move the mouse it gets really transparent.
The discussion about translucent objects continued for a few additional minutes, including more debate regarding the computer screen and whether it should be considered translucent or transparent. Then Ms. S introduced the next section of the text. After reading the subtitle and before reading the next section, she again asked the students for predictions. The class then continued with this section.
Did you use mirrors when investigating your claims about light? What happens when you hold a mirror facing a light box? You can see the path of the light bouncing off the mirror. The light from the box is hitting the mirror. Then it is bouncing off the mirror and hitting other things—other mirrors, targets, the desk or wall. Why does light bounce this way off mirrors? The surface of a mirror is very smooth. Light bounces off this smooth surface in an even, regular way. Most mirrors are made of glass with a thin coat of shiny silver on the back. What happens when light bouncing off you hits the mirrors? The light bounces off the mirror in the same pattern as it hit the mirror. You see yourself.
At this point Ms. S paused and asked for a volunteer to summarize the paragraph. When the class continued reading, she explicitly drew the students' attention to the claim that two students, Kevin and Ilya, had made following their first-hand investigation, and its relevance to the text:
Ms. S: Did you try to get the light to travel using anything other than mirrors? Kevin, did you try that? [walks over and places hand on Kevin's shoulder]
Kevin: Yeah.
Ms. S: What do you think would happen if you tried to use white paper instead of a mirror? What happened with white paper, according to Kevin and Ilya? Ilya, what happened?
Ilya: Well, it would just go a little and then it stops.
Ms. S: It just seemed to stop? David?
David: Well, it works sort of like a mirror but it's not quite as smooth I don't think because paper can be folded easily so it won't be as smooth as a mirror so it won't reflect as well. But mirrors, you can't bend a mirror or mess it up. It's very smooth. There's no way to do it. It's like rock.
Ms. S: All right, so we have two thoughts, Kyla and Ayaka. One thought is that light does not bounce off of anything but mirrors. And the other thought is that it does bounce off other things but because they're not smooth, as David said …
David: They don't bounce as well.
Ms. S: They don't bounce as well. I want you to think about that, which one you kind of agree on at this point.
Compared to a mirror, even the smoothest paper is very rough. Because the surface of the paper is rough, light that strikes it bounces in many directions. We say the light is scattered. It might be hard to see, but a faint light could be seen if you put your hand or a book in front of the paper. Some of the light bounces from the white paper to your hand or the book.
With this, Ms. S stopped and asked the class, “Why don't we see the light as clearly bouncing off the white paper?” When students found this difficult to answer, she asked them what the article said about the surface of the paper. The answer to this question still eluded the class, so Ms. S reread the portion of the text related to this. After rereading, the class voted on whether they thought light was reflected off of objects other than mirrors. Student opinion on this topic was split, and Ms. S continued with the next paragraph.
When light bounces it is said to be reflected. Light is reflected from one mirror to another mirror, or to a desk or a chair. Light is reflected from white paper or shiny things to your hand or a book. A page in the book may become bright enough for you to read by the reflected light. However, when light hits black paper, almost no light bounces from it. Instead of reflecting the light, most of the light energy is absorbed by the paper.
After this section, Ms. S asked the class to remember Tim's claim from his first-hand investigation. The students recalled that Tim had predicted that black absorbed more light than white, and was therefore hotter, based on his experience playing soccer, while wearing dark and light colored jerseys. They also returned to their discussion of computer screens. Finally, Ms. S concluded the lesson by reviewing each of the claims on the board and having the students discuss, based on what they had learned from the article, whether they agreed or disagreed with each claim.
Day 2 of Second-hand Investigations
Ms. S began this lesson by reviewing the student's claims, recorded on the board. This discussion was similar to the one held at the end of the first day of the second-hand investigation which was 3 days earlier.
Ms. S: I want to review a little bit. Take a look up here. Turn your chairs so you can see if you're like Sarah and you're facing the front. I wrote the questions, the remaining questions we said we had from our secondhand and from our first-hand investigations, I wrote them pretty much how we said them last time. And I want to go through them real quickly. We're just going to read the last section of the article that we didn't get to before. Ok, we said before, was there any information about black holes in the article?
Students: No.
Ms. S: Was there any information on the speed of light?
Students: No.
Ms. S: Hi, Katie. Yes, Nick?
Nick: I have something that shows that it's very, very, very fast. Whenever we turned the light box on, the light immediately shot out. There was no gap.
Ms. S: Right. In any case, it's very fast. We just don't know exactly how fast from that, do we? Yeah, that's good. But the article really didn't say anything about it, or that it was the fastest thing in the solar system. [points to claim on board] So we still have no, no evidence about that. How about water splitting light into colors? [points to next claim on board] What did we say about that last time? Do we have any evidence in the article to show that that would happen? That water could do that? Nick?
Nick: No, but, um, I did when I put the plastic cup there, there was a little bit of, there was one blue strip of color.
Ms. S: Yeah, we said we needed a little bit more information about that. Zoe?
Zoe: Well, I just, about light is the fastest thing in the solar system?
Ms. S: Hm-mm?
Zoe: Well, we know it's faster than sound because with lightning and thunder.
Ms. S: What happens?
Zoe: Lightning gets here before the thunder.
Ms. S: Interesting. Ok. Good observation. Do you know what she means by that?
Students: Yeah.
Ms. S: Have you heard about that? Ok, good.
Jung Ho: I know why. Because light goes faster than sound.
Ms. S: That's what Zoe was saying. That's kind of a natural proof, isn't it? [points to next claim on board] Um, black absorbs, I put most here, we didn't have most on our claim but I think the article said most. Black absorbs most of the light and white reflects most of the light. And last time we proved that that was, or we found out from the article, that that was …
Students: True.
Ms. S: Um, anyone have anything more to say about that? About what we found out? [no response from students] Ok, [points to next claim] Light is a source of energy.
Students: no … yeah … no
Ms. S: The article said just a teeny bit about that, and I think it was in association, it was associated with this. [points to previous claim, then to next claim] How about light is reflected, oh, I changed this one, actually. We had up here last time light is not reflected by objects other than mirrors, and I changed it because we said no, that wasn't true. So I changed it to say, light is reflected by objects other than mirrors. And what did it say in the article about that? How do we know that that is true? That light is reflected by objects other than mirrors? Katie, what do you think?
Katie: Well, because of, it said in here that [looking at the article] did you try light to travel with anything other than mirrors? And it bounces off. It's like …
Ms. S: Ok, how does light bounce off of a mirror? [no response from students] Ok, why don't you look at the second page, under light bounces. Right there in the middle. Can you turn to the second page? Kind of skim that paragraph. You see where it says how light bounces off a mirror? About two thirds of the way down?
Students: uh-huh … yeah
Ms. S: Do you see that? Sarah, do you see that? About two thirds of the way down, that paragraph in the middle of the page? What does it say? What does it say, Katie?
Katie: [reading] most mirrors are made of glass, even, re—[starts again] Most mirrors are made of glass with a thin coat of shiny silver on the back. What happens when light bouncing off you hits the mirrors? The light bounces off the mirror in the same pattern as it hit the mirror. You see yourself.
Ms. S: Actually even the sentence before that, or the two sentences before that, it says [reading] The surface of a mirror is very smooth. Light bounces off this smooth surface in an even, regular way. Ok, how about other objects, then? If we said that light bounces off of all things, all objects, then how is it different than bouncing off a mirror? They used white paper as an example. How is it different? Zoe, did you have an idea about that? [Zoe shakes head no] Ok, David.
David: Um, it said in the article that even the smoothest paper is rough so it wouldn…t bounce off as well because, um, paper is just not very, um, smooth.
Ms. S: So the light would bounce off in all different
David: directions and scatter.
Ms. S: Scatter.
At this point, Ms. S asked the class to vote again on whether they agreed that light bounces off everything. There were still several students who did not agree. One student, Julian, volunteered that he knew, “… one thing that light does not bounce off of—air.” Ms. S added this statement to the class list of claims. The introduction of this topic sparked a debate among the students.
Nick: Ms. S? [Ms. S is writing Julian's claim on the board]
Ms. S: Yeah?
Nick: I know, I know, I think no for that one but I know why no. Because we can't see air. [We can't see air.]
Katie: [We can't prove it because we cannot see air.]
Nick: That's because light doesn't reflect onto the air and then go to our eyes. Because it can't reflect off air.
Student [off camera]: Why not?
Katie: We can't, we can't
Ms. S: Just a second. One at a time. Katie?
Katie: Well, we can't see air so it's like impossible to tell if that's true or not.
Nick: Well, it said, it said in the article the way you see things, or something like this, the way we see things is it reflects off that thing and goes to your eyes. But it can't reflect off air so it doesn't go to your eyes.
Ms. S: Interesting. So that's sort of Nick's theory.
Katie: But we can't prove that.
At this point, the discussion began to focus on whether we could test this claim, and whether we can in fact see air or not. Katie offered her dad's help in investigating this, and David B. made comments regarding smoke and steam, which he decided weren't pure air but air with water and “particles” in it. The class' discussion eventually sent them back to the article for information regarding whether light bounces off of or travels through air.
Ms. S: Ok, one more comment about that. Jung Ho?
Jung Ho: Well, it's just that I think light travels through air. It doesn't bounce off.
Ms. S: Do you have any evidence in the article? Did it say anything about that in here?
Jung Ho: Well, not really but about Nick's claim.
Ms. S: Did anyone see anything about that in here? About light traveling through air in the article?
Student [off camera]: No, but I've got something to prove.
Ms. S: Take a look at the first page. Just (?) with me. Look at the second paragraph. Do you see anything in there that talks about light traveling through air?
Students: Yeah…yes…yeah
Ms. S: You see that? What is it? Ilya, can you read that sentence about that?
Ilya: [reading] Luminous objects are objects that give off light.
Ms. S: Look at the top of that paragraph, the second paragraph.
Ilya: Where?
Ms. S: The second paragraph. It says when.
Ilya: Oh, Ok. [reading] When light travels from a luminous object to your eyes it has to travel through air.
David B: So it travels through air.
Ms. S: Air is transparent so light travels right through air.
In discussing the discourse that unfolded in Ms. S's class during the second-hand investigation, these are the features we address; (a) the extension of first-hand investigations, (b) the seamless quality emerging between first- and second-hand investigations in this context, (c) the metacognitive dimension to the discourse, and (d) the role the second hand investigation played in providing a common inquiry that advanced conceptual understanding.
Consistently throughout the discourse, there was attention paid to using the text for the purpose of extending the students' first-hand inquiry. For example, Ms. S focused the students' attentions on those claims for which there was still a lack of consensus. She began the second-hand investigation with the students' claims and models and engaged in a continuous process of tacking back and forth between the text and the student-generated claims; for example, when the text signaled that “light travels through some materials differently than others,” Ms. S stopped to inquire what the students already knew about this characteristic of light, given their first-hand experiences. Similarly, when the text raised what is essentially a claim (when light hits black paper, almost no light bounces from it; instead the light energy is absorbed), Ms. S directed the students' attention to the evidence they had mustered for this claim from their own inquiry. Hynd and Alvermann and their colleagues (e.g., Alvermann & Hynd, 1989; Hynd, Qian, Ridgeway, & Pickle, 1992) documented the important role that student dissatisfaction with existing knowledge plays in conceptual change. By engaging in the second-hand investigation so that it was essentially in the service of the first-hand investigation, the students' thinking remained at the forefront; the students' ideas were the touchstones, not to be usurped by the text.
There was a seamless quality relative to tacking between the students' experiences and the ideas presented in the text to determine knowledge claims. For example, when reading about luminous and nonluminous objects, and also when reading about the properties of transparent, translucent, and opaque objects, the class was directed to explore their immediate environment for the purpose of identifying these phenomena. Further evidence of the seamlessness is presented in that portion of the discussion when Ms. S incorporated the investigation and evidence generated by two students (Kevin and Ilya) and encouraged the class to respond to this evidence essentially as “text.” The intertextuality is made more salient by the fact that Kevin read from his personal notebook at this point in the discussion. There is evidence that the students had already begun to appropriate this orientation to second-hand investigations; for example, even though Ms. S was drawing the students' attention to whether the text had provided additional information regarding the speed of light, Nick offered additional evidence, drawing from the class' first-hand investigation (“whenever we turned the light box on, the light immediately shot out”). Furthermore, the students used the text as an occasion for generating additional claims (e.g., the role that particles in the air play in reflection).
In addition, there was a metacognitive dimension to the discourse that merits attention. For example, Ms. S was careful to make distinctions between first- and second-hand investigations. She made finer distinctions between those issues (represented as claims) that were unanswered (e.g., the nature of light as energy) and those issues that cannot be investigated first-hand (black holes). She labeled those claims for which there was no consensus [does water “split” (refract) light in the same way that a prism splits light?] as opposed to those on which there was consensus but for which there was insufficient evidence (dark objects absorb more light than lighter colored objects). She called the students' attention to what they already knew relative to the information in the text, and she signaled how the text might advance their emergent understandings of claims they had generated.
Finally, this second-hand investigation revealed the role that text can play when students have had disparate experiences in their first-hand experiences and yet the class is trying to advance class claims. Recall that the students in this class were free to investigate whatever claims regarding light about which they were curious and for which they had the necessary materials and equipment. The value of this approach is that, across the class, students had experienced a broad range of phenomena related to light (e.g., color derived from white light, the relationship between color and the absorption of light, the relationship between the texture of an object and the manner in which light reflects off that object); however, this range of experiences made it more difficult for students to achieve consensus on a particular set of claims regarding the behavior of light. The text, in hand with the diverse experiences of the students, provided a shared context in which the class could advance their consideration and judgment regarding a common set of claims. This finding is reflected on the measure of conceptual understanding that was conducted with these students before their first-hand experiences, following their first-hand experiences, and following their second-hand experiences. On the pretest concept measure, only 2 of the 27 students in this classroom correctly indicated (via drawing) that light (from the sun) is reflected off a target (in this case, a tree) and to the eyes of the viewer. Following their first-hand investigation, 16 students correctly identified how the viewer is able to see the tree. However, following the second-hand investigation, all but one student correctly responded to this question.
The descriptive research in Ms. S' class advanced our understanding of the role that the text, the teacher, the classroom community, and inquiry activity play in advancing students' scientific inquiry and conceptual understanding. The close study of one teacher's implementation of second-hand investigations was invaluable to informing our thinking about the challenges and opportunities inherent in achieving a productive intersection between text and first-hand investigations in the context of guided inquiry science teaching in the elementary grades. Although there were many positive and worthwhile experiences created in the conduct of this second-hand investigation, we were also struck by those features that were missing and yet seemed integral to fully productive second-hand investigations; for example, children were not engaged in assuming a critical stance relative to the text and the text seemed to do little to advance the children's opportunities to learn to think and reason scientifically. These observations influenced our thinking about the design features we would include in the innovative genre we developed to support second-hand investigations in GIsML instruction. Our goal was to design text that would assume some of the burden traditionally on the teacher to engage in the use of text for the broad range of purposes we had in mind.
DESIGNING TEXT TO SUPPORT GUIDED INQUIRY TEACHING
Our decision to model the text on a scientist's notebook was influenced by our interest in the role that second-hand investigations could play in advancing students' understandings related to both the topic under study (e.g., light), and the use of scientific reasoning through learning about the experiences and thinking of others. Toward this end, there are many ways in which the notebook represents a think-aloud on the part of Lesley who documents the purpose of her investigation, the question(s) guiding her inquiry, the investigative procedures in which she is engaged, the ways in which she is gathering and choosing to represent her data, the claims emerging from her work, the relationships among these claims and her evidence, the conclusions she is deriving, and the new questions that are emerging from her inquiry.
The innovative texts that we designed and investigated are a hybrid of exposition, narration, description, and argumentation. They were designed in conjunction with the inquiry programs of study in use in our GIsML classrooms (How Light Interacts With Objects, The Study of Floating and Sinking, The Study of Soils). One of the features that students have frequently commented on with regard to these texts is the presence of “voice” in these notebooks. As the quotes with which we opened this manuscript suggest, students equate the reading of these texts to learning from a “real person,” and have suggested that this feature personalizes their reading and renders the text more interesting to them.
There are a number of features that are present in these texts that are consistent with promoting scientific literacy. (See Appendix for a sample text.) The texts include multiple ways of representing data, including tables, figures, and diagrams. For example, diagrams are used to illustrate the setup of the investigation materials. Figures are used to depict data that students can interpret, along with the scientist. Tables model the various ways in which data can be arrayed, and the narrative accompanying the table models the activity of interpreting these data.
There are opportunities for the scientist to revise her thinking based on the collection of additional or more specific data. Students are supported in tracing the source and nature of these revisions. There are reference materials included in these texts that serve to advance the inquiry. For example, in a notebook entry regarding light, the scientist includes what she has learned from studying Newton's investigations of light and color. This provides the opportunity for the scientist to model the use of a second-hand investigation as she critically reads and interprets the reference information and indicates how she will formulate claims from this information to advance her own inquiry. These reference materials are also useful for enriching the conceptual information with which children can work.
Yet another feature of these notebooks is the extent to which they portray the ways in which scientists interact with one another and observe particular conventions to facilitate these interactions. For example, in one entry, Lesley notes that fellow scientists were not persuaded by her data because they were inexact, leading her to use an instrument that would provide more exact data and a process that could be more readily replicated. In the next section of this chapter, we describe a quasi-experimental study in which we compared the outcomes of using this innovative text with the outcomes of using considerate-expository text.
EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH COMPARING THE INNOVATIVE TEXT WITH TRADITIONAL TEXT
The purpose of this quasi-experimental research was to compare the process and outcomes of using the innovative text, when compared with considerate-expository text (herein referred to as traditional text) to support a second-hand investigation, in the absence of any first-hand experiences. The innovative text was modeled after the scientist's notebook and contained the features described earlier. The traditional text was designed as a considerate, nonrefutational, expository text. We elected to design this study as a within-subject, across-group, study in which each child served as his or her own control and read both the notebook and traditional version of a text. Recognizing the role that background knowledge plays in comprehension, both versions of the text addressed the general topic of light. Both a notebook and traditional text were constructed for the subtopic—reflection, and both a notebook and traditional text were constructed for the subtopic—refraction. Children who read the notebook version of reflection read the considerate-expository version of refraction, and vice versa.
This study took place in two waves. The first wave began in late October 1998 in Granite City. The classroom teachers in three fourth-grade classrooms, all of which were located in different schools in this district, agreed to participate. Our inability to identify a fourth classroom for this wave meant that the design was incomplete; there was no condition in which the students first read the traditional refraction text followed by the notebook reflection text. The second wave began in February 1999. This wave took place in one school in Maple Grove, in which four fourth-grade teachers agreed to participate; hence, for this wave, we had a complete design.
The demographics for each of the two districts suggested important differences in their characteristics. Granite City is an urban district that serves a significant number of families that qualify for free, or reduced-cost, lunch, whereas Maple Grove is a rural district with many fewer families in financial distress. The racial/ethnic profile of Maple Grove is fairly homogenous, whereas Granite City is somewhat heterogeneous, with a significant population (30.3%) of self-identified African Americans. Furthermore, there were potentially important differences in the characteristics of the participating classrooms within the two districts. The Gates MacGinitie Reading Achievement scores (across both vocabulary and comprehension) were consistently lower in the Granite City schools than in the Maple Grove Schools. Because of these sets of differences, we report the results for each district separately.
Table 5.1 presents the characteristics of the two text types across the two topics. We attempted to hold similar all features of the text (e.g., overall length, number of propositional units, readability) that might interfere with our ability to study the differential effects of the features in which we were most interested (those modeling scientific reasoning and the use of inquiry to advance scientific understanding). These features are best represented in the propositional units that are characterized as syntactic versus
TABLE 5.1
Characteristics of the Two Text Types
substantive. Substantive units refer to those statements that were written to inform the children's understanding about the reflection or refraction of light (e.g., “the texture of an object will affect the direction that the light is reflected…,” “light is energy”). Syntactic units are those that communicate the process and nature of scientific reasoning (e.g., “I need to think about how this information helps me to understand my own data and to answer my questions”).
Excerpts from the two text types are provided in Tables 5.2 and 5.3 below.
For each of the two subtopics we designed a paper and pencil assessment to be administered before and after the students read each text. There were seven items on each assessment (some with multiple parts—totaling 14 points). Of these items, three items were designed to measure the recall of factual information. The remaining items were designed to assess students' ability to engage in inferencing from the text. With respect to the items requiring inference, two dealt solely with substantive knowledge and two with a combination of substantive and syntactic knowledge (the ability to engage in scientific reasoning). For example, on the refraction
| When scientists have measured the light reflecting from objects they have found that some light is always reflected. That is, for all objects, some but not all of the light reaching them is reflected. The light that is not reflected can be absorbed by the object. Scientists have wondered what determines the amount of light reflected. They have found that light or white objects reflect most of the light and absorb only a little. Dark or black objects, on the other hand, mostly absorb the light energy and little is reflected from them. You may have experienced this fact about light in your own life as you have touched objects that have had some light shining on them. |
| Scientist Lesley Park | Date 10/28/97 | Page 2 |
What I concluded from these data
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assessment, students were provided a table with the optical densities of five materials (glass and four other materials). They were asked to indicate which material would bend light the most when the light was moving into this material from glass. The concept of optical density was described in the text; however, to be successful on this item, students needed to know how to read the data represented in the table, they needed to be able to compare the materials as relevant to the issue of optical density, and they had to complete the comparisons required to determine which material would bend light to the greatest extent.
Given the different affordances of the two text types, it was important to consider the relationship between the text and the instruction. We did not expect students to read and respond to these texts independently; rather, the students' reading of the text was mediated by the teacher (Palincsar). This was decided based on the following: It would be uncommon for fourth-grade teachers to assign such text to be read independently, and we did not want students' ability to decode the text to limit what we could determine about their learning from the text. Hence, we were interested in determining how the characteristics of these two text types would interact with the students' use of these texts.
With the traditional text, the teacher employed domain-general strategies, that is, with each paragraph, the teacher elicited a summary in which the students were encouraged to identify the main ideas. The students were also asked to identify the questions that were addressed in the paragraph, and they were asked if any information presented in the paragraph required clarification. When using the notebook text, the teacher mirrored the activities suggested in the GIsML heuristic. At the beginning of the text, the teacher asked the students to identify the purpose of the inquiry. As the text continued, the teacher engaged the students in identifying the investigative procedures, interpreting the data, examining the relationships among the data, and identifying the implications of these relationships with regard to claims one might make.
Using nonparametric statistical analyses, we determined the following outcomes. In Maple Grove, for both topics (reflection and refraction), there were statistically significant differences in learning in favor of the scientist's notebook text with respect to mean posttest scores, mean scores on the substantive knowledge items, and mean scores on the substantive knowledge + reasoning items. In Granite City, only when considering the refraction topic were there statistically significant differences in favor of the scientist's notebook. There were no learning differences (by text type) for the topic of reflection; however, posttest scores for the items requiring substantive knowledge + reasoning approached significance (level) in favor of the scientist's notebook text.
In summary, both versions of the text were supportive of students' learning across the two topics concerning light; however, in three of the four conditions in which we could compare the relative benefits of the text genre, the results favored the notebook genre. In one sample (Granite City) for one topic (reflection), there was no significant difference between the outcomes for students who learned about reflection using the notebook versus the traditional text.
To fully understand these differences in outcomes is to examine the nature of the instructional interactions supported by these two text types. Generally, across the seven classrooms, when the notebook text was in use, the instructional conversation reflected the inquiry process. Students were prompted to reflect on the text in terms of the inquiry reported in Lesley's notebook, and across the classes, the students were able to draw on the substantive information in the text to not only follow but to also anticipate the inquiry that was subsequently described. For example, in the refraction notebook version, the text provided opportunities for the students to draw on their relevant background knowledge to generate explanations for an observation quite familiar to them—the appearance that a straw in water is “broken” at the point it enters the water. Because the text was written as an ongoing inquiry, students responded to their reading by bringing to bear their own experiences with this type of phenomenon, making suggestions about how Lesley could proceed to further investigate the phenomenon in other contexts. This type of conversation was far less likely to occur during the reading of the traditional text in which the phenomenon and its explanation were presented explicitly for the students and then illustrated in additional contexts.4
Finally, there were substantially more opportunities for students to engage in coconstruction relative to understanding light when responding to the notebook version. For example, the notebook text about reflection provided information in a table about the characteristics of given materials (i.e., color, texture) and the interaction of light with each. Students had to hypothesize about the relationship between the characteristics of objects and the behavior of light. In contrast, in the traditional version, students were provided with a description of the relationship, which they then paraphrased; however, this did not engage them in the same constructive process relative to building conceptual understanding about light.
In the final portion of this chapter, we report a subset of findings from an observational study that was conducted in two fourth-grade classrooms where teachers used several notebook texts to engage their students in second-hand investigations that complemented their first-hand inquiries.
Observational Research With the Innovative Text
In her dissertation study, Danielle Ford examined the experiences of two fourth-grade teachers and their students as they engaged in first-hand investigations in a program of study entitled, How Light Interacts With Objects, and in second-hand investigations using two notebook texts designed for this program of study.
In this section, we highlight a few of the findings from her research, drawing on the experiences of Ms. Dunbar and her class. (The reader is referred to Ford, 1999 for complete information regarding this work). As we engaged in this research, we were especially interested in ascertaining the instructional opportunities afforded by the text, those features of the text that were most challenging, and the relationship between the first- and second-hand investigations. For the purpose of this chapter, we are interested in reporting those observations that influence our current thinking about the design of these texts.
Ford made a number of observations regarding the ways in which these teachers made use of the structural features of the text. For example, these texts contained several tables and figures to which the teachers devoted considerable time, guiding student thinking about why these features were included and how they might be used. This is an interesting finding to the extent that the ability to interpret data that are presented in tables and figures is integral to the comprehension of scientific texts (Roth & McGinn, 1998).
Ms. D: Why do you think she [Lesley] gave us this picture?
Ann: I think she wanted us to understand her thinking, so she put pictures and labeled it. So we would understand what she was thinking. Not just the words. It's kinda like what we were doing for our investigations, because we said that we wanted them [peers] to put pictures on theirs [posters] and words and to label them so we would understand. And that's what she's doing.
One of the most obvious ways in which the text influenced the children's thinking was when they returned to conduct another cycle of their own first-hand investigations following their initial second-hand investigation. The students were very attentive to the organization and representation of their data, drawing heavily on the formatting ideas presented in the scientist's notebook. In addition, they quickly appropriated the idea of quantifying the amount of light, adopting the same scale introduced by Lesley.
The second-hand investigation also appeared to be an effective means of introducing the students to a more precise lexicon with which to describe their own observations regarding light. For example, following the reading, the students revised the list of class claims appropriating the terms “absorbed” and “transmitted” to substitute for “goes through” and “stays in.”
We purposefully designed the text to report findings that would be revised on further investigation. This feature led to one of the most interesting exchanges to occur in the course of the second-hand investigation, when there was a conflict between a class claim that had received widespread support following the students' first-hand investigations (“Light reflects off all objects”) and data that were presented by Lesley in her notebook; i.e., “these data suggested that light did not reflect off a piece of black felt.” In the beginning of this exchange, Nat, who is leading the discussion, summarizes and then follows with a question that is focused on the conflicting finding:
Nat: I think on this table what they're trying to tell us is how the objects went with light, and how the shadow was and how it behaved. And my question is, why did the black felt have no light? Byron?
Byron: Cause it was really hard for it to reflect and go into the light catcher.
Mitch, another student in the class, is disturbed with this finding:
Mitch: That's not true! Cause it says light can reflect off anything [pointing to the class claim that has been posted on the wall]
Ms. D: Hold on! What does it say there [on the table]?
Mitch: On reflected, it says “no light.”
Ms. D: What does that mean?…
Mitch: That she don't believe that light reflects off everything.
Ms. D: Okay, so she wouldn't believe one of our claims.
This incongruity led the children to speculate why it might be that Lesley's observation differed from their own. Among their speculations were the possibility that the black felt with which she was investigating was different than their own and (pointing to the figure that Lesley provided of her experimental setup) noticing that her light catcher was not placed as closely to the object as were their light catchers. As Lesley proceeds with her investigation, she is advised by other scientists to use a light meter for the purposes of obtaining more accurate data.
Ms. D: So, this is a pretty important thing. If you've got a group of scientists, and you're sharing, and they want something else from you. Do they just say, well, Lesley, we're not convinced?
Becca: One of the scientists said for her to use a light meter. They were trying to help her to get more data by one of the scientists saying she could use a light meter… The scientists weren't saying she was wrong or not right.
Ms. D: They actually did a couple of things. They were very specific about what they wanted more from her. They told her they wanted to know more about the amount of light reflected from an object compared to the amount of light transmitted from an object. That's what they wanted her to focus on. And they said, you know, it's not exact, and here's an idea of what you might want to use to go back and make it more exact.
The students were immensely pleased when, with the use of this instrument, Lesley also measured reflected light from the black felt.
Similar to the findings of Dunbar and Klahr (1989), Ford (1999) also found that students were challenged in distinguishing among evidence, claims, and data. In the presentations regarding their own first-hand investigations, as well as in their interpretations and discussions of Lesley's inquiry, these constructs were not used with rigor. Furthermore, consistent with the findings of Kuhn (1989) and Schauble and Glaser (1990), although students were fairly adept at identifying those data that supported their claims, there was little attention to the role of disconfirming evidence. In addition, claims for which there was no evidence were dropped from the class conversation.
As we reflect on findings such as these, we are intrigued with additional possibilities that might be featured in the text. For example, we are interested in the modeling of scientific argumentation in more explicit ways, especially if the text exploits the first-hand experiences that students have engaged in so that they are in a position to coconstruct the argument with the scientist, or to deconstruct another's argument. We will continue to pursue the use of these texts to present the norms and conventions of scientific problem solving and to demonstrate the social ways in which the cannon is generated and refined over time.
THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES ASSOCIATED WITH USING TEXT IN GUIDED INQUIRY SCIENCE
This multifaceted program of research has both shaped and supported our thinking about the role and nature of second-hand investigations in advancing elementary children's learning of science and the processes of scientific reasoning. The early observational work in Ms. S's room, which led to the development of the notebook genre, changed our thinking about the possibilities with text in inquiry instruction in unexpected ways. This research revealed a number of the challenges inherent in conducting second-hand investigations, particularly at the elementary level, where children may have had relatively few experiences using informational text. These challenges included the need to teach students to use text generatively, to assume a critical stance relative to text, to monitor their understanding of text, and to build connections between the information presented in the text and the understandings they developed from their first-hand investigations. Teachers face the additional challenge posed by the paucity of commercially prepared text material that can productively support this kind of second-hand inquiry. This paucity, in hand with thinking about the challenges of second-hand investigations, led us to consider designing our own text, which resulted in the scientist's notebook genre. The quasi-experimental work provided sufficient support for the benefit of the notebook genre over more traditional text to lead us to continue investigating both the instructional possibilities and learning outcomes with this new genre.
Furthermore, the quasi-experimental research and the later observational work represent an initial response to concerns expressed by teachers, experienced with guided inquiry science teaching, about the added value of second-hand investigations. They expressed concerns that text not supplant the important learning that students could experience in the course of first-hand inquiry, for example, examining data for patterns, determining how data constitute evidence and counterevidence for extant claims, thinking through the process of representing one's data and interpreting others' data, and designing further inquiry experiences. In addition, these studies shaped our thinking about additional features to explore to further enhance the ways in which the text could support students in developing knowledge of and facility with scientific reasoning.
The observational research also informed our thinking about the demands that teaching from the notebook texts places on teachers. Engaging children in interacting with the notebook texts in an inquiry fashion requires careful mediation on the part of the teacher. In turn, teachers need to be supported in developing teaching practices that promote the use of text as an inquiry. Similar to the notion advanced by White and Frederiksen (1998), who suggested that their software, ThinkerTools, is a valuable way of scaffolding the initial implementation of a guided inquiry curriculum, our hypothesis is that the innovative text genre that assumes the form of a scientists' notebook can be an effective way of scaffolding both students' and teachers' use of text in an inquiry fashion. We are planning future research to investigate this very issue: Does the use of the notebook genre influence the ways teachers and students use commercially prepared text? We are also interested in how we might exploit the design of notebook texts for the purpose of supporting children's learning of some of the more challenging aspects of scientific reasoning, for example, coordinating data, evidence, and claims in the service of constructing a sound scientific argument. These texts might also be used to engage students in the process of evaluating multiple explanations for both accuracy and parsimony. In addition, we are interested in exploring further the interplay of first- and second-hand investigations. For example, our preliminary data suggest that strategically experienced second-hand investigations can have a productive influence on the ways children enact and learn from first-hand investigations. We have seen that second-hand investigations suggest strategies to children regarding how they might most effectively represent their data during first-hand investigations. Similarly, in the course of second-hand investigations, we have observed that children begin to develop a shared lexicon for discussing their inquiries, either first- or second-hand.
In closing, our research program is at an intersection that we believe holds promise for advancing inquiry based teaching and learning of science in the elementary grades by; (a) conceptualizing instruction as guided inquiry teaching consisting of first- and second-hand experiences, (b) the presence of text features that support both the conduct of first- and second-hand investigations, and (c) the nature of classroom contexts necessary for effective inquiry based teaching and meaningful learning via inquiry.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The comparative text research reported in this paper was supported with a grant from the McDonnell Foundation's Cognitive Studies in Educational Practice Program. The classroom observational research was supported with funding from CIERA. The professional development context reported in this paper was supported with grants from the Spencer/MacArthur Foundations' Program on Professional Development and the Eisenhower Higher Education Program. The authors gratefully acknowledge reviews of an earlier draft of this chapter by Sharon Carver and Leona Schauble.
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1 There were 18 teacher participants the first 2 years of this work (1996–1998) and there were 14 active participants the third year of this work (1998–1999).
2 The participants in this Community of Practice met biweekly (for 4 hours each meeting) during the two academic years from 1996 through 1998, and once monthly during 1999. In addition, they committed two weeks of full days during the summers of 1996 and 1997 and one week during 1998.
3 The authors are grateful to Danielle Ford, who prepared the text used in Ms. S's second-hand investigation.
4 It is, of course, possible for the instructional conversation to override the constraints of the text. For example, in one class, which was using the traditional version of the refraction text, a child promptly placed a pencil in a bottle of water on his desk and proudly displayed his demonstration to his classmates, prompting conversation about this and related phenomena.
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APPENDIX
| Scientist | Lesley Park | Date 10/26/97 | Page 1 |
Today I investigated how light interacts with different materials. I shined a flashlight on different solid objects and looked at what happened to the light. I used a light catcher to see if light reflected off the object, I looked behind the object to see if light was transmitted by it (traveled through) or if there was a shadow. A shadow would tell me that the object was blocking the light. Figure 1 shows how I used my equipment.
Figure 1. Materials in investigation.Positions where I described the Light:
A - on the light catcher
B - area behind the object
From the data I collected, I made Table 1 to list the ways light interacted with solid objects.
| OBJECT | ON LIGHT CATCHER [light reflected] |
ON BACK of Object [light transmitted] |
AREA BEHIND Object [light blocked] |
| Clear Glass | dim light | bright light | light shadow |
| Purple Glass | dim purple light | bright purple light | dark purple shadow |
| Silver Wrap | bright light | no light | dark shadow |
| White Plastic Sheet | dim light | medium light | medium shadow |
| White Typing Paper | bright light | dim light | medium shadow |
| Black Felt | no light | no light | very dark shadow |
| Orange Cardboard | dim orange light | dim reddish light | dark shadow |
What I concluded from my data:
- Light reflects off all solid objects, except if they are black.
- Light does not go through all solid objects.
- All objects block the light some amount.
- If a lot of light is reflected off a solid object, not much light is transmitted through it. If a lot of light is transmitted through a solid object, not much light is reflected.
When I showed my claims and evidence to other scientists, they were not convinced of my conclusions because my data were not exact. The other scientists were not confident in my judgments about how the amount of light reflected from an object compared to the amount of light that was transmitted through it.
One scientist suggested that I use a light meter to collect more data. She told me a light meter is an instrument that measures the brightness of light. With this tool, I can actually measure the amount of light at any place. Figure 2 shows a picture of a light meter. It measures light in units of candles. I plan to repeat my experiments with the same materials but using a light meter.
Figure 2. Picture of a light meter.
When I repeated the light experiments, I used the same materials in the same way. Figure 3 shows the setup when I measured the light reaching each object. The light meter told me that the light from the flashlight was 10 candles bright.
Figure 3.
Using the light meter.
I also used the light meter to measure at two other points (shown in Figure 3). The light at Point A tells me how much light reflected from each object, and the light at Point 3 tells me how much light was transmitted through each object. I recorded these measurements in Table 2.
| OBJECT | Light REFLECTED from object (A) | Light TRANSMITTED through object (B) | TOTAL Light measured |
| Clear Glass | 2 candles | 7 candles | 9 candles |
| Purple Glass | 2 candles | 6 candles | 8 candles |
| Silver Wrap | 7 candles | 0 candles | 7 candles |
| White Plastic Sheet | 5 candles | 2 candles | 7 candles |
| White Typing Paper | 4 candles | 3 candle | 7 candles |
| Black Felt | 1 candle | 0 candles | 1 candle |
| Orange Cardboard | 3 candles | 2 candles | 5 candles |
What I concluded from these data:
- The light reflected from each solid object was always less than the amount of light on the object.
- The light transmitted through each solid object was always less than the amount of light on the object.
- The total amount of light transmitted and reflected from a solid object does not add up to the light reaching the object. A + B # 10 candles.
Question for me to think about: If they don't add up, where is the other light? Can I assume it is absorbed in the material?
When I thought about whether the light was being absorbed, I thought about how all the objects made a shadow (see Table 1). I know that a shadow means light is blocked, so maybe this means that when light is blocked, some light is absorbed and stays in the object.
I wonder whether other scientists are thinking in this way? To find out, I will go to the library to read what other reeearchere have claimed about light.
I read several articles in the Journal of Research on Optics to learn about what other scientists have found out about light. Here is what one researcher said:
Our results tell us that light is a form of energy that can interact in several ways with a material. From our measurements of the temperature of solid objects after shining light on them, we determined these relationships:
- all objects reflect and absorb light
- the amount of energy that is absorbed or reflected depends on the material
- white objects mostly reflect light and black objects mostly absorb light; red and yellow objects absorb less light than green and blue objects
- thin objects transmit some light through them, and the thicker an object the more light is absorbed and the less light is transmitted
What I learned from the writings of this scientist:
- Light is energy.
- Light can be reflected, absorbed, and transmitted by the same object.
- All solid objects reflect AND absorb light.
- The color of an object tells us something about how light interacts with it.
- How light interacts with an object is also determined by the thickness of the object.
I need to think about how this Information helps me think about my own data and conclusions.
The second claim that I recorded from the work other scientists did helped me the most in my thinking. If light can reflect, transmit, and be absorbed by the same object, I think that helps explain why the light meter readings didn't add up to 10 candles in my investigation. I only measured the light that was reflected or transmitted. I think the “missing” light was light that was absorbed by each object.
I used my measurements from Table 2 and my thinking about absorption to describe how light interacted with each of my objects. Here's how I described the light meter readings:
1 − 3 = “a little” |
4 − 6 = “some” |
7 − 9 = “a lot.” |
I recorded these results in Table 3.
| OBJECT | REFLECTS Light | TRANSMITS Light | ABSORBS Light |
| Clear Glass | Yes, a little | Yes, a lot | Yes, a little |
| Purple Glass | Yes, a little | Yes, some | Yes, a little |
| Silver Wrap | Yes, a lot | None | Yes, a little |
| Whitish Plastic | Yes, some | Yes, a little | Yes, a little |
| White Typing Paper | Yes, some | Yes, a little | Yes, a little |
| Black Felt | Yes, a little | None | Yes, a lot |
| Orange Cardboard | Yes, a little | Yes, a little | Yes, some |
What I concluded:
- Light always interacts with a solid object in at least two ways.
These results tell me that light does not interact in the same way for each object. That made me wonder, why does light behave differently for different objects? I am also wondering how light can Interact In different ways with the same object. What does that mean about what light is like? I will have to figure out how to investigate to answer these questions.