Learning logs: A classroom practice for enhancing scientific sense making

Abstract

This case study of an advanced physics class analyzes the implications of a practice that creates opportunities for groups of science students to share thoughts and observations, defend viewpoints, and negotiate consensus about their thinking. The activity that facilitates such sense-making processes is computerized journaling. Because these documents are more than a static mechanism for organizing notes and observations, they are called learning logs. A system of analysis drawn from the literature on writing and learning in science was developed and systematically applied to characterize the formal and stylistic elements of writing contained in learning logs and to investigate changes in the nature and pattern of science discourse over time. These scientific conversations were found to support a dynamic classroom environment that helped learners to make sense of complex science topics. Writing in learning logs provides a vehicle for students and teachers to make their knowledge public, and builds an atmosphere for valuing the conceptual understanding of others. The journals also mediate an ongoing dialogue between the instructor and students, a feature that redefines traditional classroom roles and responsibilities. Conversing about science through the medium of computerized learning logs resulted in a closely knit community of reflective learners.

Aspects of Teaching and Learning Science: What students' diaries reveal about inquiry and traditional modes

“…Students' reflective writing about their learning in the classroom has the potential to make explicit this attempt at sense making. Analysing what and how students write in diaries as their first impressions of their classroom experience can not only give a glimpse of students' emerging understanding, making clear what students have learned and their beliefs and feelings about it (Aschbacher & Alonzo, 2004;Audet, Hickman, & Dobrynina, 1996;Balgopal & Montplaisir, 2011), but it can also reflect what students do and teachers focus on in their classrooms (Baxter, Bass, & Glaser, 2001;Minogue, Madden, Bedward, Wiebe, & Carter, International Journal of Science Education, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2015.1067933 2010Wiebe, Madden, Bedward, Minogue, & Carter, 2009). In this paper, we analyse students' reflective writing in the form of daily diary entries to examine the outcomes of inquiry and traditional teaching modes as well as a characterisation of these modes from students' perspectives.…”

A Teacher's Perspective on Technology in the Classroom: Computer Visualization, Concept Maps and Learning Logs

“…We instituted the process of learning logs to foster scientific understanding, to document the understanding and to monitor the changes in that understanding (Audet, Hickman & Dobrynina, 1996). Groups date their entries, e-mail them to their teacher, and wait for responses to guide their investigation.…”

“…While it is possible for students to maintain journals without computers, from our experience, and from what has been related to us by other teachers, such manual journals require far more work than learning logs maintained on a computer (Audet, Hickman and Dobrynina, 1996). Responding over a network to students' logs provides an immediacy in response which can be critical for student learning.…”

An International Comparative Case Study About Using Science Notebooks in Science Teacher Education

“…Araştırmalar fende yazarak öğrenmenin, öğretim ortamı hedeflere uygun bir şekilde tasarlandığında öğrencilerin bilişötesi, kritik, yaratıcı düşünme becerilerini geliştirdiğini göstermektedir (Hand, Prain & Yore, 2001;Rivard, 1994). Bu nedenle, eğer öğrenciler fen kavramlarını öğrenme sırasında iletişim kurmada fen defterlerini kullanmaya yönlendirilirlerse fen defterleri öğrencilere feni öğretmede etkili bir öğretim stratejisi olabilir (Audet, Hickman & Dobrynina, 1996;Fellows, 1994;Shepardson & Britsch, 1997). Klentschy ve Molina De La Torre (2004) e göre fen defterlerindeki yazılar, öğrencilerin dil kullanım becerilerini geliştirir ve böylelikle dünyayı anlamalarını sağlar.…”