Elementary Students’ Reasoning in Drawn Explanations Based on a Scientific Theory

Abstract

Constructing explanations of scientific phenomena is a high-leverage practice that promotes student understanding. In the context of this study, we acknowledge that children are used to receiving explanations from teachers. However, they are rarely encouraged to construct explanations about the causes and consequences of phenomena. We modified a strategy to elicit and analyze primary students’ reasoning based on scientific theory as a methodological advance in learning and cognition. The participants were fourth-graders of middle socioeconomic status in Chile’s geographical zone with high seismic risk. They drew explanations about the causes and consequences of earthquakes during a learning unit of eighteen hours oriented toward explanation-construction based on the Tectonic Plates Theory. A constant comparative method was applied to analyze drawings and characterize students’ reasoning used in pictorial representations, following the first coding step of the qualitative Grounded Theory approach. The results show the students expressed progressive levels of reasoning. However, several participants expressed explanations based on the phenomena causes even at an early stage of formal learning. More sophisticated reasoning regarding the scientific theory underpinning earthquakes was found at the end of the learning unit. We discuss approaching elementary students’ scientific reasoning in explanations based on theory, connected with context-based science education.

A Comparison of the effects of the integration sequence of interactive simulation on pre-service science teachers’ scientific explanation of buffer solutions

“…Even though previous research studies proposed that teachers could move laboratory activities to engender students to be curious before they began learning at the beginning of the chapter (Proulx, 2013;Stefaniak & Turkelson, 2014;Thampi et al, 2020). It is important that the new knowledge must be related to the background that they already know since the explanation of phenomena involves scientific knowledge (Cabello et al, 2021). Similar to other studies, it was indicated that the combination of simulation and physical laboratory was more effective than using them separately (Arıcı & Yılmaz, 2020;Jaakkola et al, 2011;Wang & Tseng, 2018).…”

“…As mentioned earlier, scientific explanations are addressed in most of the features. They have been considered a central practice in classrooms and have become of great interest in science education research (Antonio & Prudente, 2021;Cabello et al, 2021;McNeill & Krajcik, 2008a;McNeill et al, 2004;Nawani et al, 2019;Reiser et al, 2012;Yao & Guo, 2018). Numerous studies in science education research have revealed the strong points of scientific explanations.…”

“…It is an unfortunate fact that most teachers encounter problems in their classrooms in training their students to formulate scientific explanations (Cabello et al, 2021;Nawani et al, 2019). As reported in the literature, whenever teachers focus on rote memorization of either knowledge fragments or a series of conceptual facts, accomplishing the goal of inquiry is difficult for their students (Gobert, 2005).…”

Inscriptions in Science Teaching: From Realism to Abstraction

“…The precursor models are conceptually reflected both in the morphological characteristics of the actual content of a drawing, as well as in its change, recording development in students' thinking. This is because, in line with oral speech, drawings have the ability, like diagrams, to produce autonomous thinking so that they can share unique meanings (Cabello et al, 2021;Cabello, 2022). Chachlioutaki et al (2016) showed that preschool children, after a relevant didactic intervention on the phenomenon of earthquakes, improved their conceptions by improving, among other things, their drawings for some aspects of the phenomenon.…”

Drawing as a Space for Social-Cognitive Interaction

“…Thus, having students creating their own drawings is typically associated with a better understanding than when students learn from visual representations they have been given [3,12]. In particular, collaboratively created drawings provide opportunities for students to integrate multiple representations, exchange and clarify ideas, engage in elaborative discussion, build on each other's ideas, and establish shared representation and deeper science understandings [6,10,11,13,14]. Thus, collaborative drawings have affordances that emerge from both visual representation and the collaborative discourse around drawings' creation.…”