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The interaction of learning environments and student discourse about knowing, learning, and the nature of science: Two longitudinal case studies
CHAPTER
5
THE INTERACTION OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AND STUDENT DISCOURSE ABOUT KNOWING, LEARNING, AND THE NATURE OF SCIENCE: TWO LONGITUDINAL CASE STUDIES WOLFF-MICHAEL
University
ROTH
of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
Abstract This is one of a series of studies conducted by a high school physics teacher, who used constructivist referents to plan and enact the curriculum, and to understand and improve the learning environment in his physics classes. Data were collected in the course of a two-year physics course including (a) repeated administrations of a classroom learning environment survey, (b) written essays on the topics of knowing. learning, and classroom learning environment, and (c) interviews. While there was a general trend for students to adopt more constructivist views of knowing and learning, there was also a small number who resisted to adapt to the constructivist learning environment in their physics course. Two case studies of individual students are used to illustrate the interactions of the learning environment, student understanding of scientific knowledge, and the nature of science, and students’ views of their own learning. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
Classrooms can be regarded as ecologies populated with differing views about learning environment and discourses about knowing, learning, and the nature of science (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994). The complexity of the relationships within a classroom ecology may lead to changes in students’ descriptions of the classroom environment (Lucas & Roth, 1996). For example, if students change their discourse about learning, they are likely to change the way they experience classroom events and teacher activities. Similarly, a change in the discourse related to any other dimension noted above is likely to ripple through students’ other lived experiences. That is, students’ experience in and descriptions of their learning environment are expected to change when the students have new language available to describe their experiences. Past research on learning environments was largely conducted using instruments suitable to quantify students’ responses along dimensions of interest to researchers (Fraser, 1994). In most cases, the administration of such instruments and the determination of relationships to other variables were driven by researchers’ interests rather than those of teachers involved. There is a dearth of studies where teachers (a) use such instruments in the attempt to improve their classroom environments, (b) monitor changes of students’ views of the learning environment, and (c) monitor interactions between views of the learning environment and other aspects of the classroom ecology. 311
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This study was conducted in physics classrooms where I, the teacher, used constructivist referents to implement a student-centered learning environment. To direct my own professional development, I examined students’ descriptions of the learning environment over the course of two consecutive physics courses and the relationships of these descriptions to students’ discourse about knowing (i.e., their epistemological discourse), learning, and the nature of science. This study was part of my attempt to facilitate the emergence of a learning environment that was at once compatible with my constructivist referents for learning and conducive to meaningful leaming for the students.
Research Design This interpretive study was part of a three-year research project designed to improve the conditions for and understanding of learning in high school physics. Data were collected over a period covering two school years in two consecutive physics courses taught at a private all-boys school in a large urban area of Canada. There were 21 students who enrolled in the two-year physics program. (The data base consists of over 2000 type-written pages of essays and interview transcripts.) In socioeconomic terms, these students typically came from well-to-do homes of varying cultural origins, but in academic terms, they were comparable to students in surrounding public high schools. I taught both the junior (3 sections) and senior physics courses (2 sections) at the school.
Classroom Context The physics course was in many respects distinctly different from students’ other courses. It emphasized a process character of knowing and learning physics: students were provided with many opportunities to interact with each other, make sense of natural phenomena, defend choices of experiment, and discuss experimental and interpretive differences. Understanding and negotiation were valued over getting right answers. The core of the activities was constituted by studentdesigned empirical studies (70% of the time). Students usually designed their experiments based on everyday phenomena of their interest, but had to relate them to the current curricular topic. For the remaining 30% of the time, diverse activities were planned: (a) students discussed and negotiated experimental results and a variety of texts about the nature of science and objectivity; (b) I provided introductory demonstrations and modelled the use of scientific instrumentation; and (c) we discussed textbook-related questions that arose from students’ homework activities. Students also read, wrote about, and discussed selected texts and books that, in contrast to their textbook, argued for a constructivist epistemology of science. The discussions were very open and permitted students to explore in depth questions about truth, knowing and learning, nature of science, and their classroom environment; the discussions also provided me with guidance in modifying the learning environment.
Data Sources Students responded twice, in the form of essays, to a set of statements about the ontology, epistemology, and sociology of scientific knowledge (for details see Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994).
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During both years, they also wrote essays on the topic of “Knowing and learning physics.” They addressed questions such as “How do you know and learn physics?‘, “How does physics learned in the laboratory differ from that acquired from textbooks?‘, and “How does working in a group help you to learn?’ During the fall semester of their senior year, students read one chapter a week from “Inventing Reality.” Students reflected on these readings in five, 2- to 6-page type-written unstructured essays. After each essay, I moderated a whole-class discussion in which students discussed issues related to the readings of their interest. All five discussions in both sections were recorded and transcribed. Both years, the preferred form of the Constructivist Learning Environment Scale (CLES) (Taylor & Fraser, 1991) was administered. CLES consists of four groups of seven Likert-type items which ask students to rate their preferences for (a) autonomy of learning (“In this class, I decide how much time to spend on an activity”); (b) integration of new and prior knowledge (“In this class, I think about interesting real life problems”); (c) negotiation of meaning with peers (“In this class, I talk with other students about the most sensible way of solving problems”); and (d) student-centeredness (“In this class, the teacher expects me to remember things I learned in past lessons”). For both administrations, alpha-reliabilities for the four subscales ranged from .75 to .85. Students’ratings of the CLES items were used as starting points during subsequent interviews. Class means, standard deviations, and scale scores for the two students included in the case studies are presented in Table 5.1. Interviews constituted another data source. Each interview was kept flexible, but students were asked to talk more about ontology, epistemology, and sociology, contents of their essays about learning, and CLES items. If applicable, apparent contradictory statements in any previous statement were pointed out and further talk about the various issues at hand, knowing and learning physics, the nature of science, and the learning environment were elicited. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Field notes, type-written comments to students’ assignments, a required and teacher-produced curriculum guide, and students’ physics grades over the two years completed the data base.
Data Analysis Following recent work in social psychology, science studies, and situated cognition, individuals’ talk and written work are not considered to be windows on their minds, cognitive representations, beliefs, or world views (e.g., Edwards & Potter, 1992). Students’ talk and writing have to be understood not just as producing and supporting claims about knowledge, but as doing so in a way that they consider appropriate in the context of required course assignments.
Table 5.1 Classroom Learning Environment Scale Scores for Two Students and Class Means (iV=22). Autonomy
Tom Tony C&s (SD)
Prior knowledge
Year 1
Year 2
Year
4.4 3.1 3.53 (0.56)
4.7 3.0 3.98 (0.58)
4.4 4.0 4.14 (0.43)
Note. The means and standard deviations of Year during Year 2.
1
Negotiation
S-centeredness
Year2
Year 1
Year 2
Year I
Year 2
4.4 4.6 4.31 (0.34)
4.3 3.4 3.82 (0.45)
4.7 3.5 3.75 (0.53)
3.6 2.1 2.85 (0.40)
3.6 1.6 2.49 (0.46)
1include only those 22 students (of 46) that also enrolled in physics
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In the first stage of the data analysis, all of the reflections and essays were read repeatedly, important passages were highlighted, and about one-third of these essays were re-typed with a concurrent commentary. Through this procedure emerged descriptions of the students’ discourse about knowing and learning physics, the nature of science, and the learning environment. Because of collaborations with independent university colleagues (Lucas & Roth, 1996; Roth & Lucas, 1997; Roth & Roychoudhury, 1993, 1994) and with a student (Roth & Alexander, 1997), there were many opportunities to apply the techniques of peer debriefig (relationship with independent colleagues without interest in the local situation), progressive subjectivity (the shared descriptions arising from collaboration), and member checks (validation of situation descriptions by research participants, here students) for ascertaining the credibility of my research findings (Guba & Lincoln, 1989).
Results Two case studies are presented to illustrate the interactions of learning environment and student discourse about knowing, learning, and the nature of science. The students, Tom and Tony, though both were successful, represent opposites: the former enjoyed learning in this environment, whereas the latter considered himself on the receiving end in the learning process.
Physics: Joy&i, Playful, and Obscene
Tom represented the idea1 student of the school in many ways, being well-rounded in academics, sports, and artistic fields. In physics, he consistently achieved one standard deviation above the class mean on all terms and examinations of the senior year. He had broad interests including fine arts, philosophy, and the sciences, in contrast to many of his peers who majored only in the sciences. His interests, and his position as dormitory prefect often brought us together. (I was one of three supervising teachers living in the dormitory (“house masters”)). From our discussions eventually emerged a collaborative research project on students’ scientific and religious discourses (Roth & Alexander, 1997) which he also presented at international conferences. However, he was far from being a conforming student in this traditional school and repeatedly got himself into trouble for mischievous behavior. For several summers during his final high school and early university years, Tom worked in a genetics laboratory. At university, he received a scholarship to enroll in a science program at a major Canadian university, and, after completing the required foundational studies, was accepted into medical school.
Knowing Physics
Tom was the student whose discourse about knowledge changed most in the course of the two years. Initially, he talked about the existence of scientific truths, the absoluteness and infallibility of scientific knowledge, and the possibility of objectivity. He suggested that physics knowledge constituted absolute truth and was part of his God. Consequently, the universe is entirely ordered, because there exists a reason behind everything. Physics is a small part of the absolute truths which govern the universe. During the first months of his senior year, Tom’s discourse began to change dramatically. His
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reflections about “Inventing Reality” and his contributions to the related class discussions document this change in detail. He regarded physics as a language game, “joyful, playful, and obscene”: Science is a language game. It allows us to talk about the world in a community of knowers which shares a common language. This language allows us to create tools -concepts and theories -to talk about this world, predict and explain events, and thus create our knowledge of this world. By changing the language we not only change the law and principles science is stating but we also change a previously accepted truth and effectively make a new one. (Roth &Alexander, 1997)
Tom emphasized the impossibility of knowing the world apart from our experience. He argued that constructions are useful in dealing with this world, but that we can never know the functional relationship between this knowledge and the world.
Nature of Science Tom’s discourse about the nature of science and scientific endeavors also changed. At first, and consistent with his epistemological claims, he presented science as a proven method for discovering nature as it really is. Scientific experiments were used to discover the natural order of the universe. Although scientists (and people more generally) may hold false knowledge, it is through experiment that false ideas and true knowledge are separated. (“The result of an investigation is to see if an idea is correct and not affected by a presupposition”.) Although scientists’ ideas and theories are affected by presuppositions and have idiosyncratic character, the results of their investigations in which ideas and theories are put to test are “not affected by these presuppositions.” While scientists could be influenced by their social environment, the good scientists “block out their personal and social lives effectively so that these do not affect their ideas.” The shift in his epistemology-related discourse was accompanied by an equivalent shift in his talk about the nature of science. He now regarded science as an effort to construct explanatory schemes which are negotiated in a social forum of the scientific community - a description consistent with recent developments in the history and philosophy of science, social studies of science, and epistemology. Tom suggested that, as a community, scientists construct language games. When no longer viable in the light of sufficient new experimental evidence, existing language games are deconstructed.
Learning Physics Tom distinguished ‘knowing,” which can be achieved through memorization, from “understanding.” For example, to understand a physical law, he “thinks of a number of examples for the way the law is used.” He made up questions both to learn and check his knowledge. By answering these questions he gained additional knowledge and understanding of the material. Consistent with his epistemology during the junior year, Tom suggested that the laws of nature could be learned by experimentation. Knowledge obtained through experimenting is identical from that acquired from textbooks, with the one difference that he remembered those ideas better that he learned in the laboratory. Learning through collaborative work allows negotiation which facilitates the learning process. Working in a collectivity also eliminates unavoidable errors associated with individual work. Again, the knowledge acquired through group work is identical to knowledge from textbooks and laboratories, with the additional benefit of learning to collaborate and enjoying the social situation.
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Along with the discursive change about the nature of knowing, Tom developed a differentiated discourse about learning which included a critical distancing from traditional fair of school learning. For example, he remarked about textbook problems: “How do we know that these are not specially altered or ‘fudged’ problems generated to give students a false sense that they have actually learned something?’ He had developed a three-tiered model of knowing. At the first level, learning is characterized by memorization which only allows the regurgitation of facts and ideas and leads to knowledge that cannot be applied without assistance. At the second level, learning leads to understanding; it is associated with lectures, teacher explanations, and practice in textbook problems. This knowledge becomes a tool to solve textbook and “ideal-world’ problems. At the third level, leaming leads to useful knowledge applicable to everyday problems. Doing open-ended laboratory experiments, and consistently applying an existing scientific discourse to everyday, out-of-school situations describes this form of learning which was the only one that interested Tom.
Learning Environment From the beginning, Tom liked the learning environment he experienced, “which might be the result of the enjoyment I get out of studying this subject.” He preferred the degree of autonomy provided in this classroom over others (Table 5.1). His positive view on this dimension is consistent with his verbal and written comments. Comments such as “I enjoyed trying to figure out things for myself rather than looking them up in a textbook or being told what they are as we did in this experiment when we tried to figure out” characterized his talk about the open-ended laboratory experiments. He enjoyed the uncertainty, the process of learning, and received deep gratification from the successes experienced. His preference for learning through experimentation was met in the present classrooms which allowed him to construct deep understanding rather than requiring him to memorize. Tom also showed a constant but high preference for prior knowledge and the applicability of classroom knowledge to out-of-school life (Table 5.1). He indicated that he was truly interested only in the third level of his three-tiered learning theory, for “even mechanical and electronic computers could be programmed to perform at the lower tiers.” He therefore enjoyed the link the student-designed experiments provided with life outside the classroom: “I like that in our labs. I actually can take a part of science, and take it outside and apply [it] to problems that I encounter in various situations around my boarding house.” Over the two years, Tom’s preference for collective work and negotiation of meaning within groups increased to almost two standard deviations above the class mean on the corresponding scale of CLES (Table 5.1). He offered this comment after a particularly challenging experiment: “This lab also showed the importance of group discussion, since every member of the group must understand the problems faced to make it as efficient as possible.” Conversely, after an individual assignment, he suggested, “perhaps a little more group assistance would prove productive.” Although his score on student-centeredness was significantly above that of the class mean (Table 5.1), he considered the teacher as an important part of the learning environment (“I consider the teacher like another student, and students become like teachers”).
On the Receiving End of the Learning Process Tony comes from a traditional, patriarchal European family. A dominant theme in his texts and talk is the authority of others. Thus, he had chosen physics because his parents decided that he
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should become a medical doctor. Throughout the two years, Tony talked about his parents who wanted him to get the highest marks, who pressured him to succeed, and who were disappointed when he did not perform to their expectations. Tony always appeared to seek guidance and help from his teachers, brother, and higher-achieving peers. His physics achievement was 0.53 standard deviations above the class mean at the end of the junior year, and from -0.16 to +0.23 standard deviations on examinations and final grade throughout the senior year. After high school, Tony enrolled in an engineering program not far from home where his brother studied physics.
Knowing Physics During his junior year, Tony stated that nature is inherently ordered, independent of human existence. Scientific knowledge shows nature as it really is and can be considered a mirror of nature. Therefore, scientific knowledge is distinctly different from that in literature, art, or history. There is only one right way in science where knowledge is absolute (“How could science be absolute if it had different answers to the same problem?‘), whereas in the other domains, multiple interpretations are normal. In both years, Tony made the ontological claim that scientific laws exist in nature; he used intuitive and rational grounds to support his ontological claims (“It is obvious that . . .” and “How could one propose . . .?“). In the course of the two years, however, Tony’s epistemological claims changed. He no longer said that scientific knowledge represented truth but merely modeled nature - there was no possibility for testing whether or not scientific knowledge was truth in some absolute sense. Tony further claimed that mathematical models become increasingly accurate in predicting phenomena. During the time when his epistemological claims changed, Tony frequently drew on the authority of physicists (Heisenberg, Maxwell, etc.) and authors of various texts to support his claim.
Nature of Science Initially, Tony suggested that in the process of establishing scientific knowledge by means of scientific processes, there was no room for personal bias. At the same time, he suggested that individual scientists could be influenced in their research by the social environment (“One’s social environment affects not only the knowledge which one possesses but every single aspect of one’s life, including one’s personality”). Tony drew on the “truth-will-out-device” (Lucas & Roth, 1996; Roth & Lucas, 1997) to mediate the apparent discrepancy between his claim of scientific knowledge as truth and the possibility of social influences on the process of establishing this knowledge. Thus, although some scientists are influenced by their social environments, truth will eventually come out because the great scientists will make the difference and find truth. In the course of reflecting on and writing about “Inventing Reality,” scientific knowledge became for Tony a useful model for making predictions. Accordingly, he saw scientists as negotiating between alternate models to arrive at one commonly agreed upon on the basis of ease of use, parsimony, and elegance. Because this knowledge cannot be tested for its truth value, Tony no longer required the “truth-will-out-device.” He now applied what was named the “take-it-as-truthdevice”: any shared model (scientific knowledge) can be taken as truth for the moment and until further notice when new experiments and theoretical developments require model revisions and new model choices.
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Learning Physics At the beginning of his junior year, Tony proposed three different teaching/learning methods. In the first, “the student participates fully in each experiment and refers to the teacher only for assistance.” While there are advantages to this method - such as high student interest, independent learning, and learning to organize long-term projects -there are disadvantages such as failed experiments, waste of time, and “lack of counseling from the teacher.” In the second method, “the teacher stands before the student and lectures. Students record the vital parts of the lecture and ask any questions they have.” Although this method is less interesting, it has the advantage that students “learn vital information directly from the teacher, learn in a fraction of the time, and do not have the pressure of large assignments.” In the third method, students and teacher discuss a topic from many different angles. According to Tony, this method is not suitable for science because “there is a great deal of material to be covered.” During the junior year, Tony considered the transfer of “right” knowledge from teacher to student as the primary purpose of science instruction. Because scientific knowledge is a mirror of nature, there is some value in students doing laboratory experiments. If students follow correct experimental procedures, they should be able to re-discover the laws of nature. During his senior year, Tony provided a more utilitarian account of the relationship between his epistemology of scientific knowledge and learning. Accordingly, although scientific knowledge is constructed, and cannot be tested against nature for its truth value, and although it is negotiated, it is generally accepted and thus very real, especially because of the upcoming year-end examinations that would determine his grade for university admission.
Learning Environment Getting “right” answers was central to Tony’s learning. He was quite insecure and always sought right answers (“It bothers me if I don’t know which answer is the right one”). Yet he enjoyed the autonomy inherent in open experimentation to some degree, confirming his responses to the CLES autonomy scale (Table 5.1). He attributed great interest to the phenomena he and his partners investigated, and recognized the method’s value for understanding. Consistent with his low preference for student-centeredness (Table 5. l), Tony expected the teacher to provide him with guidance, assistance, and answers. He wanted the teacher to lecture exactly that which would be covered on the test. Experimenting, on the other hand, wasted a lot of time, lead to “erroneous data,” and did not always help him to understand. During both years, Tony preferred interactions and negotiations with others considerably less than his peers (Table 5.1). But he suggested that there were some positive aspects about working with others: collaboration with others helped him to clarify his ideas “because there are people to ask, there are people to discuss it with, and there are people to help you if you don’t understand something.” He enjoyed other advantages of group learning such as knowledge sharing, greater variation in insights, and experience in working on collective projects. Tony also emphasized the negative aspects of working with others. Thus, he found a “lab very frustrating because the person who calibrated the probes did not do them properly, thus the results were off and we had to recalibrate them both times.” He was frequently upset with his partners when they could not explain concepts understandably or did not complete their parts of a joint project. Towards the beginning of the junior year, Tony already preferred much less autonomy and student-centeredness than his peers (Table 5.1). These tendencies increased in the course of the
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two physics courses. Consistent with his ideas about learning, Tony preferred perpetual guidance by the teacher as authority. He frequently described his dissatisfaction with the open-ended inquiry and the lack of precise instruction. The teacher constituted his frame of reference and he expected them to provide him with the “right” answers. The sharp decrease in Tony’s preference for student-centeredness in the second year (Table 5.1) was also apparent in interviews and written work. These reflected an increased reliance on the teacher as the reference for learning. He expected even more teacher guidance and directions, and preferred lectures over any other activity structure. He was mainly concerned with marks - which he considered simply as a barrier in the way to some future career - and little concerned with understanding. Over the year, Tony developed an aversion to experimentation arguing that it did not improve understanding, for it required interpretation and “much more thought and comprehension.”
Discussion This study was conducted to better understand the relationships between students’ discourse about and assessment of the learning environment, on the one hand, and their talk about knowing, the nature of science, and their own learning on the other. The data presented here show that these relations between the different discourse topics are not simple. An interesting case in point is the evolving relationship of Tony’s talk about knowing and his own learning. In the beginning of his junior year, and although he considered lectures the best learning environment, Tony regarded laboratory activities as an additional option for learning physics. He considered scientific knowledge to be a mirror of nature that could be inductively derived from experimentation. During the second year, he made a difficult transition to viewing scientific knowledge as one of several possible models that emerges from the negotiations within the community of scientists. Coincidentally, he rejected laboratory work almost entirely, for it was no longer possible to learn the “right way” through induction from experiments. Simultaneously, Tony’s descriptions of the autonomy and student-centeredness dimensions of the learning environment were significantly more negative than his peers. Although he characterized the nature of science as tentative, uncertain, model-like, and arising from negotiations, he preferred a learning environment that did not try to provide an “authentic” experience of science. He pragmatically considered currently accepted scientific knowledge as “truth,” and was willing to memorize it without understanding so that he could enter the next stage towards a future profession. In many ways the most radical development was observable in Tom’s discourse. He began with an ontology that was absolute and instituted by a deity; he described scientific knowledge as a mirror of this eternal order. Over the two years, and in his own words significantly influenced by the discussions of “Inventing Reality,” Tom began to describe ontology and epistemology in the ways they are currently considered in philosophy (pragmatism) and constructivist sociology of knowledge. Hence, scientific knowledge is a language game that both describes and structures our experience of the world. The uncertainty associated with a constantly changing scientific discourse did not bother him in the least; to the contrary, he considered it a game that is “playful, joyful, and obscene.” He approached learning in the same way, but considered the currently accepted language game as that which he was to learn, well knowing that it could change in the future. Teachers who engage in learning environment research will certainly face dilemmas. Whereas it was easy to coordinate Tom’s needs with the learning environment, it was much more difficult
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with my understanding of learning. to accommodate Tony, whose needs seem to be incompatible Not all students will change their learning strategies and understanding of learning processes in the way some of my students had done to adapt to the learning environment. Tony wanted more teacher direction, less student autonomy, and less collaborative work than I was willing to institute for the entire class. However, I used that information to arrange small group sessions for those students who desired more interactions with the teacher, discussions of textbook readings, and feedback to end-of-chapter problems whenever students expressed such needs. Those students not interested in the session continued to work independently. Thus, this class included different activities for different students to accomodate their preferred styles and the way they experienced the learning environment. My understanding of what constitutes a learning environment changed considerably in the course of the three-year research project of which the present study is but a small part. Initially, I conceived it as do many of my colleagues as a stable entity which is perceived in the same or different ways by different individuals. In contrast, research such as that reported here has led to a description that focuses on the complexity of student and teacher experiences that are referents for understanding and acting in the classroom. What then can the present study tell teachers and researchers? Certainly not the kind of knowledge that permits more external control. Rather, this study should stand as an exemplar for what teachers can do to understand the learning environments in which they themselves participate. By changing their participation patterns, they will facilitate changes in the learning environment, changes that are likely to ripple throughout the entire system. Above all, however, it is important to recognize the complexity of the interactions of learning environment, knowing, learning, and the nature of science within each student whom we teach.
References Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. London: Sage. Fraser, B. J. (1994). Research on classroom and school climate. In D. L. Gabel (Ed.), Handbook of research in science teaching and learning (pp. 493-541). New York: Macmillan. Guba, E., & Lincoln, Y. (1989). Fourth generation evaluation. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lucas, K. B., & Roth, W.-M. (1996). The nature of scientific knowledge and student learning: Two longitudinal case studies. Research in Science Education, 26, 103-127. Roth, W.-M., & Alexander, T. (1997). The interaction of students’ scientific and religious discourses: Two case studies. International Journal of Science Education, 19, 125-146. Roth, W.-M., & Lucas, K. B. (1997). From “truth” to “invented reality”: A discourse analysis of high school physics students’ talk about scientific knowledge. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 145-179. Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1993). The nature of scientific knowledge, knowing, and learning: The perspectives of four students. International Journal of Science Education, IS, 27-44. Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1994). Physics students’ epistemologies and views about knowing and learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 31.5-30.
Taylor, P C., & Fraser, B. J. (1991). CLES: An instrument for assessing constructivist learning environments. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Biography Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne University of Victoria, Canada.
Chair, Applied Cognitive
Science and Science Education,
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THE INTERACTION OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AND STUDENT DISCOURSE ABOUT KNOWING, LEARNING, AND THE NATURE OF SCIENCE: TWO LONGITUDINAL CASE STUDIES WOLFF-MICHAEL
University
ROTH
of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
Abstract This is one of a series of studies conducted by a high school physics teacher, who used constructivist referents to plan and enact the curriculum, and to understand and improve the learning environment in his physics classes. Data were collected in the course of a two-year physics course including (a) repeated administrations of a classroom learning environment survey, (b) written essays on the topics of knowing. learning, and classroom learning environment, and (c) interviews. While there was a general trend for students to adopt more constructivist views of knowing and learning, there was also a small number who resisted to adapt to the constructivist learning environment in their physics course. Two case studies of individual students are used to illustrate the interactions of the learning environment, student understanding of scientific knowledge, and the nature of science, and students’ views of their own learning. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
Classrooms can be regarded as ecologies populated with differing views about learning environment and discourses about knowing, learning, and the nature of science (Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994). The complexity of the relationships within a classroom ecology may lead to changes in students’ descriptions of the classroom environment (Lucas & Roth, 1996). For example, if students change their discourse about learning, they are likely to change the way they experience classroom events and teacher activities. Similarly, a change in the discourse related to any other dimension noted above is likely to ripple through students’ other lived experiences. That is, students’ experience in and descriptions of their learning environment are expected to change when the students have new language available to describe their experiences. Past research on learning environments was largely conducted using instruments suitable to quantify students’ responses along dimensions of interest to researchers (Fraser, 1994). In most cases, the administration of such instruments and the determination of relationships to other variables were driven by researchers’ interests rather than those of teachers involved. There is a dearth of studies where teachers (a) use such instruments in the attempt to improve their classroom environments, (b) monitor changes of students’ views of the learning environment, and (c) monitor interactions between views of the learning environment and other aspects of the classroom ecology. 311
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This study was conducted in physics classrooms where I, the teacher, used constructivist referents to implement a student-centered learning environment. To direct my own professional development, I examined students’ descriptions of the learning environment over the course of two consecutive physics courses and the relationships of these descriptions to students’ discourse about knowing (i.e., their epistemological discourse), learning, and the nature of science. This study was part of my attempt to facilitate the emergence of a learning environment that was at once compatible with my constructivist referents for learning and conducive to meaningful leaming for the students.
Research Design This interpretive study was part of a three-year research project designed to improve the conditions for and understanding of learning in high school physics. Data were collected over a period covering two school years in two consecutive physics courses taught at a private all-boys school in a large urban area of Canada. There were 21 students who enrolled in the two-year physics program. (The data base consists of over 2000 type-written pages of essays and interview transcripts.) In socioeconomic terms, these students typically came from well-to-do homes of varying cultural origins, but in academic terms, they were comparable to students in surrounding public high schools. I taught both the junior (3 sections) and senior physics courses (2 sections) at the school.
Classroom Context The physics course was in many respects distinctly different from students’ other courses. It emphasized a process character of knowing and learning physics: students were provided with many opportunities to interact with each other, make sense of natural phenomena, defend choices of experiment, and discuss experimental and interpretive differences. Understanding and negotiation were valued over getting right answers. The core of the activities was constituted by studentdesigned empirical studies (70% of the time). Students usually designed their experiments based on everyday phenomena of their interest, but had to relate them to the current curricular topic. For the remaining 30% of the time, diverse activities were planned: (a) students discussed and negotiated experimental results and a variety of texts about the nature of science and objectivity; (b) I provided introductory demonstrations and modelled the use of scientific instrumentation; and (c) we discussed textbook-related questions that arose from students’ homework activities. Students also read, wrote about, and discussed selected texts and books that, in contrast to their textbook, argued for a constructivist epistemology of science. The discussions were very open and permitted students to explore in depth questions about truth, knowing and learning, nature of science, and their classroom environment; the discussions also provided me with guidance in modifying the learning environment.
Data Sources Students responded twice, in the form of essays, to a set of statements about the ontology, epistemology, and sociology of scientific knowledge (for details see Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994).
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During both years, they also wrote essays on the topic of “Knowing and learning physics.” They addressed questions such as “How do you know and learn physics?‘, “How does physics learned in the laboratory differ from that acquired from textbooks?‘, and “How does working in a group help you to learn?’ During the fall semester of their senior year, students read one chapter a week from “Inventing Reality.” Students reflected on these readings in five, 2- to 6-page type-written unstructured essays. After each essay, I moderated a whole-class discussion in which students discussed issues related to the readings of their interest. All five discussions in both sections were recorded and transcribed. Both years, the preferred form of the Constructivist Learning Environment Scale (CLES) (Taylor & Fraser, 1991) was administered. CLES consists of four groups of seven Likert-type items which ask students to rate their preferences for (a) autonomy of learning (“In this class, I decide how much time to spend on an activity”); (b) integration of new and prior knowledge (“In this class, I think about interesting real life problems”); (c) negotiation of meaning with peers (“In this class, I talk with other students about the most sensible way of solving problems”); and (d) student-centeredness (“In this class, the teacher expects me to remember things I learned in past lessons”). For both administrations, alpha-reliabilities for the four subscales ranged from .75 to .85. Students’ratings of the CLES items were used as starting points during subsequent interviews. Class means, standard deviations, and scale scores for the two students included in the case studies are presented in Table 5.1. Interviews constituted another data source. Each interview was kept flexible, but students were asked to talk more about ontology, epistemology, and sociology, contents of their essays about learning, and CLES items. If applicable, apparent contradictory statements in any previous statement were pointed out and further talk about the various issues at hand, knowing and learning physics, the nature of science, and the learning environment were elicited. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Field notes, type-written comments to students’ assignments, a required and teacher-produced curriculum guide, and students’ physics grades over the two years completed the data base.
Data Analysis Following recent work in social psychology, science studies, and situated cognition, individuals’ talk and written work are not considered to be windows on their minds, cognitive representations, beliefs, or world views (e.g., Edwards & Potter, 1992). Students’ talk and writing have to be understood not just as producing and supporting claims about knowledge, but as doing so in a way that they consider appropriate in the context of required course assignments.
Table 5.1 Classroom Learning Environment Scale Scores for Two Students and Class Means (iV=22). Autonomy
Tom Tony C&s (SD)
Prior knowledge
Year 1
Year 2
Year
4.4 3.1 3.53 (0.56)
4.7 3.0 3.98 (0.58)
4.4 4.0 4.14 (0.43)
Note. The means and standard deviations of Year during Year 2.
1
Negotiation
S-centeredness
Year2
Year 1
Year 2
Year I
Year 2
4.4 4.6 4.31 (0.34)
4.3 3.4 3.82 (0.45)
4.7 3.5 3.75 (0.53)
3.6 2.1 2.85 (0.40)
3.6 1.6 2.49 (0.46)
1include only those 22 students (of 46) that also enrolled in physics
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In the first stage of the data analysis, all of the reflections and essays were read repeatedly, important passages were highlighted, and about one-third of these essays were re-typed with a concurrent commentary. Through this procedure emerged descriptions of the students’ discourse about knowing and learning physics, the nature of science, and the learning environment. Because of collaborations with independent university colleagues (Lucas & Roth, 1996; Roth & Lucas, 1997; Roth & Roychoudhury, 1993, 1994) and with a student (Roth & Alexander, 1997), there were many opportunities to apply the techniques of peer debriefig (relationship with independent colleagues without interest in the local situation), progressive subjectivity (the shared descriptions arising from collaboration), and member checks (validation of situation descriptions by research participants, here students) for ascertaining the credibility of my research findings (Guba & Lincoln, 1989).
Results Two case studies are presented to illustrate the interactions of learning environment and student discourse about knowing, learning, and the nature of science. The students, Tom and Tony, though both were successful, represent opposites: the former enjoyed learning in this environment, whereas the latter considered himself on the receiving end in the learning process.
Physics: Joy&i, Playful, and Obscene
Tom represented the idea1 student of the school in many ways, being well-rounded in academics, sports, and artistic fields. In physics, he consistently achieved one standard deviation above the class mean on all terms and examinations of the senior year. He had broad interests including fine arts, philosophy, and the sciences, in contrast to many of his peers who majored only in the sciences. His interests, and his position as dormitory prefect often brought us together. (I was one of three supervising teachers living in the dormitory (“house masters”)). From our discussions eventually emerged a collaborative research project on students’ scientific and religious discourses (Roth & Alexander, 1997) which he also presented at international conferences. However, he was far from being a conforming student in this traditional school and repeatedly got himself into trouble for mischievous behavior. For several summers during his final high school and early university years, Tom worked in a genetics laboratory. At university, he received a scholarship to enroll in a science program at a major Canadian university, and, after completing the required foundational studies, was accepted into medical school.
Knowing Physics
Tom was the student whose discourse about knowledge changed most in the course of the two years. Initially, he talked about the existence of scientific truths, the absoluteness and infallibility of scientific knowledge, and the possibility of objectivity. He suggested that physics knowledge constituted absolute truth and was part of his God. Consequently, the universe is entirely ordered, because there exists a reason behind everything. Physics is a small part of the absolute truths which govern the universe. During the first months of his senior year, Tom’s discourse began to change dramatically. His
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reflections about “Inventing Reality” and his contributions to the related class discussions document this change in detail. He regarded physics as a language game, “joyful, playful, and obscene”: Science is a language game. It allows us to talk about the world in a community of knowers which shares a common language. This language allows us to create tools -concepts and theories -to talk about this world, predict and explain events, and thus create our knowledge of this world. By changing the language we not only change the law and principles science is stating but we also change a previously accepted truth and effectively make a new one. (Roth &Alexander, 1997)
Tom emphasized the impossibility of knowing the world apart from our experience. He argued that constructions are useful in dealing with this world, but that we can never know the functional relationship between this knowledge and the world.
Nature of Science Tom’s discourse about the nature of science and scientific endeavors also changed. At first, and consistent with his epistemological claims, he presented science as a proven method for discovering nature as it really is. Scientific experiments were used to discover the natural order of the universe. Although scientists (and people more generally) may hold false knowledge, it is through experiment that false ideas and true knowledge are separated. (“The result of an investigation is to see if an idea is correct and not affected by a presupposition”.) Although scientists’ ideas and theories are affected by presuppositions and have idiosyncratic character, the results of their investigations in which ideas and theories are put to test are “not affected by these presuppositions.” While scientists could be influenced by their social environment, the good scientists “block out their personal and social lives effectively so that these do not affect their ideas.” The shift in his epistemology-related discourse was accompanied by an equivalent shift in his talk about the nature of science. He now regarded science as an effort to construct explanatory schemes which are negotiated in a social forum of the scientific community - a description consistent with recent developments in the history and philosophy of science, social studies of science, and epistemology. Tom suggested that, as a community, scientists construct language games. When no longer viable in the light of sufficient new experimental evidence, existing language games are deconstructed.
Learning Physics Tom distinguished ‘knowing,” which can be achieved through memorization, from “understanding.” For example, to understand a physical law, he “thinks of a number of examples for the way the law is used.” He made up questions both to learn and check his knowledge. By answering these questions he gained additional knowledge and understanding of the material. Consistent with his epistemology during the junior year, Tom suggested that the laws of nature could be learned by experimentation. Knowledge obtained through experimenting is identical from that acquired from textbooks, with the one difference that he remembered those ideas better that he learned in the laboratory. Learning through collaborative work allows negotiation which facilitates the learning process. Working in a collectivity also eliminates unavoidable errors associated with individual work. Again, the knowledge acquired through group work is identical to knowledge from textbooks and laboratories, with the additional benefit of learning to collaborate and enjoying the social situation.
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Along with the discursive change about the nature of knowing, Tom developed a differentiated discourse about learning which included a critical distancing from traditional fair of school learning. For example, he remarked about textbook problems: “How do we know that these are not specially altered or ‘fudged’ problems generated to give students a false sense that they have actually learned something?’ He had developed a three-tiered model of knowing. At the first level, learning is characterized by memorization which only allows the regurgitation of facts and ideas and leads to knowledge that cannot be applied without assistance. At the second level, learning leads to understanding; it is associated with lectures, teacher explanations, and practice in textbook problems. This knowledge becomes a tool to solve textbook and “ideal-world’ problems. At the third level, leaming leads to useful knowledge applicable to everyday problems. Doing open-ended laboratory experiments, and consistently applying an existing scientific discourse to everyday, out-of-school situations describes this form of learning which was the only one that interested Tom.
Learning Environment From the beginning, Tom liked the learning environment he experienced, “which might be the result of the enjoyment I get out of studying this subject.” He preferred the degree of autonomy provided in this classroom over others (Table 5.1). His positive view on this dimension is consistent with his verbal and written comments. Comments such as “I enjoyed trying to figure out things for myself rather than looking them up in a textbook or being told what they are as we did in this experiment when we tried to figure out” characterized his talk about the open-ended laboratory experiments. He enjoyed the uncertainty, the process of learning, and received deep gratification from the successes experienced. His preference for learning through experimentation was met in the present classrooms which allowed him to construct deep understanding rather than requiring him to memorize. Tom also showed a constant but high preference for prior knowledge and the applicability of classroom knowledge to out-of-school life (Table 5.1). He indicated that he was truly interested only in the third level of his three-tiered learning theory, for “even mechanical and electronic computers could be programmed to perform at the lower tiers.” He therefore enjoyed the link the student-designed experiments provided with life outside the classroom: “I like that in our labs. I actually can take a part of science, and take it outside and apply [it] to problems that I encounter in various situations around my boarding house.” Over the two years, Tom’s preference for collective work and negotiation of meaning within groups increased to almost two standard deviations above the class mean on the corresponding scale of CLES (Table 5.1). He offered this comment after a particularly challenging experiment: “This lab also showed the importance of group discussion, since every member of the group must understand the problems faced to make it as efficient as possible.” Conversely, after an individual assignment, he suggested, “perhaps a little more group assistance would prove productive.” Although his score on student-centeredness was significantly above that of the class mean (Table 5.1), he considered the teacher as an important part of the learning environment (“I consider the teacher like another student, and students become like teachers”).
On the Receiving End of the Learning Process Tony comes from a traditional, patriarchal European family. A dominant theme in his texts and talk is the authority of others. Thus, he had chosen physics because his parents decided that he
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should become a medical doctor. Throughout the two years, Tony talked about his parents who wanted him to get the highest marks, who pressured him to succeed, and who were disappointed when he did not perform to their expectations. Tony always appeared to seek guidance and help from his teachers, brother, and higher-achieving peers. His physics achievement was 0.53 standard deviations above the class mean at the end of the junior year, and from -0.16 to +0.23 standard deviations on examinations and final grade throughout the senior year. After high school, Tony enrolled in an engineering program not far from home where his brother studied physics.
Knowing Physics During his junior year, Tony stated that nature is inherently ordered, independent of human existence. Scientific knowledge shows nature as it really is and can be considered a mirror of nature. Therefore, scientific knowledge is distinctly different from that in literature, art, or history. There is only one right way in science where knowledge is absolute (“How could science be absolute if it had different answers to the same problem?‘), whereas in the other domains, multiple interpretations are normal. In both years, Tony made the ontological claim that scientific laws exist in nature; he used intuitive and rational grounds to support his ontological claims (“It is obvious that . . .” and “How could one propose . . .?“). In the course of the two years, however, Tony’s epistemological claims changed. He no longer said that scientific knowledge represented truth but merely modeled nature - there was no possibility for testing whether or not scientific knowledge was truth in some absolute sense. Tony further claimed that mathematical models become increasingly accurate in predicting phenomena. During the time when his epistemological claims changed, Tony frequently drew on the authority of physicists (Heisenberg, Maxwell, etc.) and authors of various texts to support his claim.
Nature of Science Initially, Tony suggested that in the process of establishing scientific knowledge by means of scientific processes, there was no room for personal bias. At the same time, he suggested that individual scientists could be influenced in their research by the social environment (“One’s social environment affects not only the knowledge which one possesses but every single aspect of one’s life, including one’s personality”). Tony drew on the “truth-will-out-device” (Lucas & Roth, 1996; Roth & Lucas, 1997) to mediate the apparent discrepancy between his claim of scientific knowledge as truth and the possibility of social influences on the process of establishing this knowledge. Thus, although some scientists are influenced by their social environments, truth will eventually come out because the great scientists will make the difference and find truth. In the course of reflecting on and writing about “Inventing Reality,” scientific knowledge became for Tony a useful model for making predictions. Accordingly, he saw scientists as negotiating between alternate models to arrive at one commonly agreed upon on the basis of ease of use, parsimony, and elegance. Because this knowledge cannot be tested for its truth value, Tony no longer required the “truth-will-out-device.” He now applied what was named the “take-it-as-truthdevice”: any shared model (scientific knowledge) can be taken as truth for the moment and until further notice when new experiments and theoretical developments require model revisions and new model choices.
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Learning Physics At the beginning of his junior year, Tony proposed three different teaching/learning methods. In the first, “the student participates fully in each experiment and refers to the teacher only for assistance.” While there are advantages to this method - such as high student interest, independent learning, and learning to organize long-term projects -there are disadvantages such as failed experiments, waste of time, and “lack of counseling from the teacher.” In the second method, “the teacher stands before the student and lectures. Students record the vital parts of the lecture and ask any questions they have.” Although this method is less interesting, it has the advantage that students “learn vital information directly from the teacher, learn in a fraction of the time, and do not have the pressure of large assignments.” In the third method, students and teacher discuss a topic from many different angles. According to Tony, this method is not suitable for science because “there is a great deal of material to be covered.” During the junior year, Tony considered the transfer of “right” knowledge from teacher to student as the primary purpose of science instruction. Because scientific knowledge is a mirror of nature, there is some value in students doing laboratory experiments. If students follow correct experimental procedures, they should be able to re-discover the laws of nature. During his senior year, Tony provided a more utilitarian account of the relationship between his epistemology of scientific knowledge and learning. Accordingly, although scientific knowledge is constructed, and cannot be tested against nature for its truth value, and although it is negotiated, it is generally accepted and thus very real, especially because of the upcoming year-end examinations that would determine his grade for university admission.
Learning Environment Getting “right” answers was central to Tony’s learning. He was quite insecure and always sought right answers (“It bothers me if I don’t know which answer is the right one”). Yet he enjoyed the autonomy inherent in open experimentation to some degree, confirming his responses to the CLES autonomy scale (Table 5.1). He attributed great interest to the phenomena he and his partners investigated, and recognized the method’s value for understanding. Consistent with his low preference for student-centeredness (Table 5. l), Tony expected the teacher to provide him with guidance, assistance, and answers. He wanted the teacher to lecture exactly that which would be covered on the test. Experimenting, on the other hand, wasted a lot of time, lead to “erroneous data,” and did not always help him to understand. During both years, Tony preferred interactions and negotiations with others considerably less than his peers (Table 5.1). But he suggested that there were some positive aspects about working with others: collaboration with others helped him to clarify his ideas “because there are people to ask, there are people to discuss it with, and there are people to help you if you don’t understand something.” He enjoyed other advantages of group learning such as knowledge sharing, greater variation in insights, and experience in working on collective projects. Tony also emphasized the negative aspects of working with others. Thus, he found a “lab very frustrating because the person who calibrated the probes did not do them properly, thus the results were off and we had to recalibrate them both times.” He was frequently upset with his partners when they could not explain concepts understandably or did not complete their parts of a joint project. Towards the beginning of the junior year, Tony already preferred much less autonomy and student-centeredness than his peers (Table 5.1). These tendencies increased in the course of the
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two physics courses. Consistent with his ideas about learning, Tony preferred perpetual guidance by the teacher as authority. He frequently described his dissatisfaction with the open-ended inquiry and the lack of precise instruction. The teacher constituted his frame of reference and he expected them to provide him with the “right” answers. The sharp decrease in Tony’s preference for student-centeredness in the second year (Table 5.1) was also apparent in interviews and written work. These reflected an increased reliance on the teacher as the reference for learning. He expected even more teacher guidance and directions, and preferred lectures over any other activity structure. He was mainly concerned with marks - which he considered simply as a barrier in the way to some future career - and little concerned with understanding. Over the year, Tony developed an aversion to experimentation arguing that it did not improve understanding, for it required interpretation and “much more thought and comprehension.”
Discussion This study was conducted to better understand the relationships between students’ discourse about and assessment of the learning environment, on the one hand, and their talk about knowing, the nature of science, and their own learning on the other. The data presented here show that these relations between the different discourse topics are not simple. An interesting case in point is the evolving relationship of Tony’s talk about knowing and his own learning. In the beginning of his junior year, and although he considered lectures the best learning environment, Tony regarded laboratory activities as an additional option for learning physics. He considered scientific knowledge to be a mirror of nature that could be inductively derived from experimentation. During the second year, he made a difficult transition to viewing scientific knowledge as one of several possible models that emerges from the negotiations within the community of scientists. Coincidentally, he rejected laboratory work almost entirely, for it was no longer possible to learn the “right way” through induction from experiments. Simultaneously, Tony’s descriptions of the autonomy and student-centeredness dimensions of the learning environment were significantly more negative than his peers. Although he characterized the nature of science as tentative, uncertain, model-like, and arising from negotiations, he preferred a learning environment that did not try to provide an “authentic” experience of science. He pragmatically considered currently accepted scientific knowledge as “truth,” and was willing to memorize it without understanding so that he could enter the next stage towards a future profession. In many ways the most radical development was observable in Tom’s discourse. He began with an ontology that was absolute and instituted by a deity; he described scientific knowledge as a mirror of this eternal order. Over the two years, and in his own words significantly influenced by the discussions of “Inventing Reality,” Tom began to describe ontology and epistemology in the ways they are currently considered in philosophy (pragmatism) and constructivist sociology of knowledge. Hence, scientific knowledge is a language game that both describes and structures our experience of the world. The uncertainty associated with a constantly changing scientific discourse did not bother him in the least; to the contrary, he considered it a game that is “playful, joyful, and obscene.” He approached learning in the same way, but considered the currently accepted language game as that which he was to learn, well knowing that it could change in the future. Teachers who engage in learning environment research will certainly face dilemmas. Whereas it was easy to coordinate Tom’s needs with the learning environment, it was much more difficult
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with my understanding of learning. to accommodate Tony, whose needs seem to be incompatible Not all students will change their learning strategies and understanding of learning processes in the way some of my students had done to adapt to the learning environment. Tony wanted more teacher direction, less student autonomy, and less collaborative work than I was willing to institute for the entire class. However, I used that information to arrange small group sessions for those students who desired more interactions with the teacher, discussions of textbook readings, and feedback to end-of-chapter problems whenever students expressed such needs. Those students not interested in the session continued to work independently. Thus, this class included different activities for different students to accomodate their preferred styles and the way they experienced the learning environment. My understanding of what constitutes a learning environment changed considerably in the course of the three-year research project of which the present study is but a small part. Initially, I conceived it as do many of my colleagues as a stable entity which is perceived in the same or different ways by different individuals. In contrast, research such as that reported here has led to a description that focuses on the complexity of student and teacher experiences that are referents for understanding and acting in the classroom. What then can the present study tell teachers and researchers? Certainly not the kind of knowledge that permits more external control. Rather, this study should stand as an exemplar for what teachers can do to understand the learning environments in which they themselves participate. By changing their participation patterns, they will facilitate changes in the learning environment, changes that are likely to ripple throughout the entire system. Above all, however, it is important to recognize the complexity of the interactions of learning environment, knowing, learning, and the nature of science within each student whom we teach.
References Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. London: Sage. Fraser, B. J. (1994). Research on classroom and school climate. In D. L. Gabel (Ed.), Handbook of research in science teaching and learning (pp. 493-541). New York: Macmillan. Guba, E., & Lincoln, Y. (1989). Fourth generation evaluation. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lucas, K. B., & Roth, W.-M. (1996). The nature of scientific knowledge and student learning: Two longitudinal case studies. Research in Science Education, 26, 103-127. Roth, W.-M., & Alexander, T. (1997). The interaction of students’ scientific and religious discourses: Two case studies. International Journal of Science Education, 19, 125-146. Roth, W.-M., & Lucas, K. B. (1997). From “truth” to “invented reality”: A discourse analysis of high school physics students’ talk about scientific knowledge. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 145-179. Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1993). The nature of scientific knowledge, knowing, and learning: The perspectives of four students. International Journal of Science Education, IS, 27-44. Roth, W.-M., & Roychoudhury, A. (1994). Physics students’ epistemologies and views about knowing and learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 31.5-30.
Taylor, P C., & Fraser, B. J. (1991). CLES: An instrument for assessing constructivist learning environments. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Biography Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne University of Victoria, Canada.
Chair, Applied Cognitive
Science and Science Education,