The Science Writing Heuristic

Thomas J. Greenbowe, Department of Chemistry, Brian Hand, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011

James Rudd, II, Department of Chemistry, California State University ≠ Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90032

Introduction

Most chemistry instructors assume that if students do a chemistry laboratory activity they will learn something. Over the past thirty years, science education researchers have investigated what students gain from science laboratory experiences. One consistent finding is that if traditional laboratory experiments are used with the traditional laboratory notebook format, students may learn some laboratory techniques, but they learn little else. Also, under these conditions, students develop a poor attitude toward science and consider the laboratory activity as a huge waste of their time. Students often view the data collected during a laboratory experiment as artificial. Using a traditional laboratory experiment, students will blindly follow the directions. Then, when the answer generated from data they collect has a large percent error, they blame poor laboratory equipment, human error, or chance. When students are asked to solve problems on lecture examinations or laboratory practical tasks that match what has been presented in lecture and in the laboratory, average student performance is poor. Incorporating guided-inquiry. learning cycles, group work, and the science writing heuristic as the basis for each laboratory experiment is the key to helping students increase their conceptual understanding of chemistry and to improve their attitude toward chemistry.

The science writing heuristic (SWH) can be understood as an alternative format students use for their laboratory reports, and a teaching technique used by the instructor (faculty or teaching assistant) to help format the flow of activities associated with the experiment. Instead of responding to the five traditional sections, purpose, methods, observations, results and conclusions, students are expected to respond to prompts eliciting questioning, knowledge claims, evidence, description of data and observations, methods, and to reflect on changes to their own thinking. Instead of taking a passive role, instructors take an active role in pre-designing activities and teaching students. Figure 1 provides an overview of the student template and the teacher template for the SWH.

The Science Writing Heuristic, Part I	The Science Writing Heuristic, Part II
A template for teacher-designed activities to promote laboratory understanding.	A template for student.
1. Exploration of pre-instruction understanding through individual or group concept mapping or working through a computer simulation.	1. Beginning ideas - What are my questions?
2. Pre-laboratory activities, including informal writing, making observations, brainstorming, and posing questions.	2. Tests - What did I do?
3. Participation in laboratory activity.	3. Observations - What did I see?
4. Negotiation phase I - writing personal meanings for laboratory activity. (For example, writing journals.)	4. Claims - What can I claim?
5. Negotiation phase II - sharing and comparing data interpretations in small groups. (For example, making a graph based on data contributed by all students in the class.)	5. Evidence - How do I know? Why am I making these claims?
6. Negotiation phase III - comparing science ideas to textbooks for other printed resources. (For example, writing group notes in response to focus questions.)	6. Reading - How do my ideas compare with other ideas?
7. Negotiation phase IV - individual reflection and writing. (For example, creating a presentation such as a poster or report for a larger audience.)	7. Reflection - How have my ideas changed?
8. Exploration of post-instruction understanding through concept mapping, group discussion, or writing a clear explanation.	8. Writing ≠ What is the best explanation that explains what I have learned?

Figure 1: The two templates for the SWH: the teacher template and the student template.

A Summary of the Theory of SWH

Current efforts in science education have highlighted the need for writing to learn strategies to be used in science classrooms (Yore, Bisanz & Hand, in press). These strategies recognize the value of having students articulate their understandings in different ways as a means to construct a richer conceptual framework of science knowledge. Importantly, these strategies are based on incorporating authentic writing tasks which extend students needs to engage with the demands of science, rather than seeing writing as note-taking, fill in the gap or complete the sentence type exercises (Prain & Hand, 1996). Writing to learn tasks incorporate the need for students to access canonical science knowledge and thus engage the nature of science, and their epistemologies and reasoning strategies as a framework to build understanding (Hand, Prain, Lawrence & Yore, 1999). The SWH is an example of this type of writing activity.

The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) (see Figure 1), consists of a framework to guide activities as well as a metacognitive support to prompt student reasoning about data. Similar to Gowinπs Vee heuristic (1981, p. 157), the SWH provides learners with a heuristic template to guide science activity and reasoning in writing. Further, the SWH provides teachers with a template of suggested strategies to enhance learning from laboratory activities. As a whole, the activities and metacognitive scaffolds seek to provide authentic meaning-making opportunities for learners. The negotiation of meaning occurs across multiple formats for discussion and writing. The SWH is conceptualised as a bridge between informal, expressive writing modes that foster personally-constructed science understandings, and more formal, public modes that focus on canonical forms of reasoning in science. In this way the heuristic scaffolds learners in both understanding their own laboratory activity and connecting this knowledge to other science ideas. The template for student thinking (see Figure 1) prompts learners to generate questions, claims, and evidence for claims. It also prompts them to compare their laboratory findings with others, including their peers and information in the textbook, Internet, or other sources. The template for student thinking also prompts learners to reflect on how their own ideas have changed during the experience of the laboratory activity.

While the SWH recognizes the need for students to conduct laboratory investigations that develop their understanding of scientific methods and procedures, the teachersπ template also seeks to provide a stronger pedagogical focus for this learning. In other words, the SWH is based on the assumption that science writing genres in school should reflect some of the characteristics of scientistsπ writing, but also be shaped as pedagogical tools to encourage students to ≥unpack≤ scientific meaning and reasoning. The SWH is intended to promote both scientific thinking and reasoning in the laboratory, as well as metacognition, where learners become aware of the basis of their knowledge, and are able to monitor more explicitly their learning. Because the SWH focuses on canonical forms of scientific thinking, such as the development of links between claims and evidence, it also has the potential to build learnersπ understandings of the nature of science, strengthen conceptual understandings and engage them in authentic argumentation process of science.

The SWH emphasises the collaborative nature of scientific activity, that is, scientific argumentation, where learners are expected to engage in a continuous cycle of negotiating and clarifying meanings and explanations with their peers and teacher. In other words, the SWH is designed to promote classroom discussion where studentsπ personal explanations and observations are tested against the perceptions and contributions of the broader group. Learners are encouraged to make explicit and defensible connections between questions, observations, data, claims, and evidence. When students state a claim for an investigation, they are expected to describe a pattern, make a generalisation, state a relationship, or construct an explanation.

The SWH promotes students participation in setting their own investigative agenda for laboratory work, framing questions, proposing methods to address these questions, and carrying out appropriate investigations. Such an approach to laboratory work is advocated in many national science curriculum documents on the grounds that this freedom of choice will promote greater student engagement and motivation with topics. However, in practice much laboratory work follows a narrow teacher agenda that does not allow for broader questioning or more diverse data interpretation. When procedures are uniform for all students, where data are similar, and where claims match expected outcomes, then the reportage of results and conclusions often lacks opportunities for deeper student learning about the topic or for developing scientific reasoning skills. To address these issues the SWH is designed to provide scaffolding for purposeful thinking about the relationships between questions, evidence, and claims.

In order to best understand the difference between a traditional lab experiment and an inquiry experiment we present a summary of each.

*****I have just added my raw notes****

A traditional laboratory experiment (I have calorimetry examples, need acid-base examples)

Example: In a thermos bottle, with the lid on, mix 50 mL of 1.0 M HCl with 50 mL of 1.0M NaOH, measure T_i and T_f. Calculate the êH_rxn. Compare your experimental value of êH_rxn with the ≥known≤ value in the literature.

An inquiry laboratory experiment

Design an experiment to see what effect the amount of 1.0 M KOH(aq) solution has on the temperature of the solution when added to 1.0 M HCl(aq). Record time vs. temperature data and determine êT for each run (minimum of 3). Test the solution with pH paper.

Compare the time vs. temperature graphs for each run. What differences exist among them? Offer a brief explanation. Calculate the # of moles and q. Compare your data with others. Identify a pattern. Identify a relationship among the heats of reaction.

A modified learning cycle

Exploration

discover a pattern

Concept/Term Introduction

link a pattern to a term/concept

build a model or representation

Concept Application

apply the model or representation in a new context.

Karplus and Their, 1967; Lawson, Abraham, Renner. 1989; Inquiry and the NSES: A Guide for Teaching and Learning. National Academy Press, Washington, DC (2000).

Application of the learning cycle

Exploration Data Collection and Analysis

Concept Invention Interpretation of Results

Application Open-Inquiry Experiment

Poor Beginning Questions

Why are there buffers?

How do you make a buffer solution? How accurate are the prepared buffer solutions (the standards)?

Is there a way to tell the properties of a salt by just seeing it?

How do I titrate a buffer solution?

Good Beginning Questions

How much acid or base does it take to override a buffer solution?

What is the relationship of the concentration of weak acid and a salt that determines the pH of a buffer solution?

When you add an acid or a base to a buffer solution, how does the buffer know which one to neutralize?

How do you select a weak acid and a salt to make a buffer solution with a specific pH?

Claim: Buffer solutions limit the change in pH when small amounts of acids and bases are added. This is because they have anions to use up the H⁺ and it uses up OH^- with H⁺ ions.

They work best when the [ acid ]= [base].

Evidence: 5 drops of NaOH or HCl in water changed the pH by 2-3 pH points. Adding the same amount of NaOH or HCl to a buffer solution of equal parts weak acid and its salt changed the pH at most by 0.1.

Last Part: A Research Study

Purpose

Teaching (TA) and learning (students) with inquiry and the SWH have no influence on student understanding of chemistry as measured by two ACS exams and total points earned in a lecture course.

Females, who have an effective TA using inquiry and the SWH, exhibit the same gain scores in their understanding of chemistry, as measured by two ACS exams and the total points earned in a lecture course, compared to males.

The subjects of this study were students enrolled in the first semester of general chemistry course (lecture and laboratory) for science & engineering students at a large university located between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, north of Kansas City and south of Minneapolis. (n = 680)

Design of the experiment

Prior to the start of classes, TAs received 3 days of training on how to teach using guided-inquiry and the science writing heuristic. During the first month of classes, TAs were mentored by two peer TAs. During the 2nd and 3rd month of classes, TAs and their students were evaluated by four observers.

Mentoring of Teaching Assistants

Formal training in the first staff meeting

Weekly follow-up in staff meetings

Occasional handouts before lab

Personal discussion with TAs before and after lab

Modeled the SWH by conducting the pre-lab

Characteristics of ineffective and effective teaching assistants

Low (Ineffective TA)

Beginning questions not discussed

TA tells students exactly what needs to be done

Individual work or pairs work separately from the class.

Instructor assigns tasks

No sharing or analysis of class data

Students immediately leave when finished with their work

High (Effective TA)

Opportunities to discuss beginning questions

Setting up the lab for student centered work

Allowing students to assign groups and tasks

Class data is presented on the chalkboard

Class data analyzed

Instructor leads a class discussion of concepts covered in laboratory

Conclusions

TAs who effectively teach chemistry laboratory using inquiry and the SWH help students achieve better scores on the ACS 1st Semester General Chemistry Exam and hour exams and quizzes in the lecture course compared to students who have a ≥traditional≤ TA.

Students who buy into doing their chemistry lab experiments using inquiry and the SWH achieve better scores on the ACS 1st Semester General Chemistry Exam and hour exams and quizzes in the lecture course compared to students doing labs the ≥traditional≤ way.

Females in chemistry labs who have effective TAs, use inquiry and use the SWH do better than females who donπt have an effective TA or do inquiry and the SWH.

The results of this research present evidence, for the first time, that there is a connection between effective teaching and learning in the chemistry laboratory (inquiry, learning cycles, SWH) and student performance in lecture and on a standardized ACS exam.

The results of this research, and other research studies, provides evidence that the SWH format for structuring chemistry laboratory notebooks helps students understand chemistry better than using a traditional laboratory notebook format. The SWH is an important component of doing inquiry in the chemistry laboratory. The SWH facilitates student thinking about chemistry.

It takes time and effort to teach both students and instructors to implement inquiry and the SWH.