Students as researchers: What and why seventh‐grade students choose to write when investigating their own research question

Abstract

All scientists depend on both reading and writing to do their scientific work. It is of paramount importance to ensure that students have a relevant repertoire of practices they can employ when facing scientific content inside and outside the school context. The present study reports on students in seventh grade acting as researchers. Over an 8‐week collaborative research period, students posed their own research question, attempted to answer it by systematically testing hypotheses, discussing findings, presenting their conclusions, and documenting their process in a written report. Drawing on the perspectives of New Literacy Studies—which sees literacy as socially situated—we analyze the purpose of all the 21 participating students’ texts (n = 344). Video observations and interviews with students are used to contextualize the writing events. We find that the students chose to write multiple kinds of texts for a variety of purposes. Analyzing purpose and the context, three stages of socialization into scientific writing is revealed, ranging from what the students write on their own initiative, via texts written through challenges to demanding research tasks scaffolded through writing instructions given by the teacher. Further, the students emphasized the relevance of both the research experience and the writing to their future adult life.

Writing in the STEM classroom: Faculty conceptions of writing and its role in the undergraduate classroom

“…More importantly, there were a variety of writing forms considered within and across faculty types. This evidence demonstrates that increased disciplinary specialty includes indistinguishable use of multiple modes of representation (Airey & Linder, , ; Lemke, ) though even very young students rely on multiple modes when free to write as they wish to complete a task (Bjorkvold & Blikstad‐balas, ), which further justifies a shift in the writing‐to‐learn community toward multimodal and multimedia tasks (Klein & Boscolo, ; Prain & Hand, ). Aligning with Airey and Linder's () assertion that discursive fluency is inherently multimodal, we argue that faculty consider writing to be inherently multimodal and that to support disciplinary discursive fluency in students, there must be repeated practice opportunities (Airey & Linder, , ; Klein & Boscolo, ; Prain & Hand, ).…”

Using the Science Talk–Writing Heuristic to Build a New Era of Scientific Literacy

“…Early research and instruction on scientific literacy emphasized the students’ ability to read the science textbook, write reports correctly, and talk about science content (Cervetti, Barber, Dorph, Pearson, & Goldschmidt, ). However, Bjørkvold and Blikstad‐Balas () suggested that language should be used to advance scientific inquiry and literacy rather than be a substitute for it. That is, language should be used as a literacy tool to help students make sense of investigations, draw inferences, represent their arguments to peers, and develop their knowledge, similar to the practices of scientists.…”

“…These reform documents reflect that the goal of science education is not only a mastery of theories but also learning how to engage in scientific argumentation. In this context, scientific argumentation involves constructing and critiquing knowledge through the argument of question, claim, evidence, and reasoning that will eventually lead to enhancing students’ scientific literacy (Bjørkvold & Blikstad‐Balas, ; Chen, Mineweaser, Accetta, & Noonan, ; Hand et al., ).…”

“…As such, the use of writing is separated from talk. Recently, Bjørkvold and Blikstad‐Balas () argued that writing used in science is a social endeavor. Deng, Kelly, and Xiao () suggested that “scientific writing is not only a modality of presenting scientific knowledge, ideas, principles, and theories, but also a linguistic way of sharing, understanding, persuading, and presenting arguments to defend claims in a scientific community” (p. 284) when writing is used with talk (Chen, Park, & Hand, 2016).…”

Arbeidstekster i utforskende arbeidsmetoder

“…Hvilken skriveopplaering elevene hadde fått før prosjektperioden, er ikke kjent for forfatteren og var heller ikke etterspurt. En analyse av datamaterialet, angående hvem som initierte skrivingen, viser at laereren kun i 14 % av skrivehendelsene instruerte elevene til å skrive [71] 16(1), 2020 (Bjørkvold & Blikstad-Balas, 2017). I de resterende 86 % av tilfellene valgte elevene selv å løse utfordringer gjennom skriving.…”