What can scientific practice look like in a classroom? Insights from scientists’ critique of high school students' climate change argumentation practice

Abstract:

The Next Generation Science Standards promote a vision in which learners engage in authentic knowledge in practice to tackle personally consequential science problems in the classroom. However, there is not yet a clear understanding amongst researchers and educators of what authentic practice looks like in a classroom and how this can be accomplished. This study explores these questions by examining interactions between scientists and students on a social media platform during two pilot enactments of a project-based curriculum focusing on the ecological impacts of climate change. During this unit, scientists provided feedback to students on infographics, visual representations of scientific information meant to communicate to an audience about climate change. We conceptualize the feedback and student work as boundary objects co-created by students and scientists moving between the school and scientific contexts, and analyze the structure and content of the scientists' feedback. We find that when giving feedback on a particular practice (e.g. argumentation), scientists would provide avenues, critiques and questions that incorporated many other practices (e.g. data analysis, visual communication); thus, scientists encouraged students to participate systemically in practices instead of isolating one particular practice. In addition, scientists drew attention to particular habits of mind that are valued in the scientific community and noted when students' work aligned with scientific values. In this way, scientists positioned students as capable of participating "scientifically." While traditionally, incorporating scientific inquiry in a classroom has emphasized student experimentation and data generation, in this work, we found that engaging with scientists around established scientific texts and data sets provided students with a platform for developing expertise in other important scientific practices during argment construction.