by Hsu, Pei-Ling

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9053-1
Online Date: 3/1/2007
Print publication date: 1/1/2007
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by Archibald, Jo-Ann; Barnhardt, Ray; Cajete, Gregory A.; Cochran, Patricia; McKinley, Elizabeth; Merculieff, Larry

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-007-9048-y
Online Date: 3/1/2007
Print publication date: 1/1/2007
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by Noblit, George; Hwang, Sungwon; Seiler, Gale; Elmesky, Rowhea

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-006-9046-5
Online Date: 3/1/2007
Print publication date: 1/1/2007
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by Lundin, Mattias

Research has shown how students can shift between different ways of communicating about natural phenomena. The point of departure in this text is that school science comprises science ways to communicate as well as everyday ways to communicate. In school science activities transitions, from for example everyday ways to explain to science ways to explain, occur and the purpose of this paper is to show what role questions play in these transitions. Data consists of video observations of a group of 24 students, 15 years of age, doing their ordinary school science work without my interference in their planning. Relevant conversations including questions were transcribed. The analysis was made by examining the establishment of relations between utterances in the transcribed conversations. Relations that bridge science and everyday language games are described in the results. Questions that were formulated in an everyday language game illustrate the difficulties of making transitions to a science language game. Without teacher guidance, students’ questions are potential promoters for making the topic drift and to develop into something totally different from the topic as planned by the teacher. However, questions promote transitions to an everyday language game. These can be used by teachers for example to adjust an everyday explanation and guide students in making science knowledge useful in daily life.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-006-9043-8
Online Date: 3/1/2007
Print publication date: 1/1/2007
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by Krange, Ingeborg

Recent research has to a limited extent explored the characteristics of students’ conceptual practices as sociocultural phenomena in general and in science education in particular. I approach this issue by studying a group of students while solving a particular scientific problem from A to Z, and as part of this analyse how different cultural means (the knowledge domain and the tools in use) structure the students’ interactions and how their interpersonal relations change over this period of time. The aim is to illustrate how these cultural means intersect in productive and less productive ways during the students’ conceptual practices. The study has its point of departure in a design experiment where a group of four students, together with their teacher, solve different problems related to the biological phenomenon of sequencing a DNA molecule (the insulin gene). Video-recordings of the students’ interactions constitute the basis for this analysis. The cultural means strongly structure the students’ conceptual practices during their problem solving processes. Whereas the knowledge domain structured the whole process, the significant roles of the website and the computer-based 3D model of the insulin gene were especially apparent during the second part of the trajectory. The intersection of these cultural means appear productive in terms of disciplinary knowledge when the students’ became aware of how to handle this relationship. The interpersonal relations between the students and their teacher altered slightly in the beginning and became increasingly more fixed during the students’ progression.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-006-9040-y
Online Date: 3/1/2007
Print publication date: 1/1/2007
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