New Perspectives in Science Education

In our research we focus on how school students collaboratively reactualise knowledge in authentic science practise. By authentic we draw on practise of scientists in engaging in contemporary research. Chinn & Malhotra (2002) identified significant differences between school science inquiry as evidenced by a survey of textbooks and practice, and cognitive and epistemic aspects of ‘authentic’ scientific research. These differences include how research questions originate, planning with multiple and complex variables, and generalising across different situations. Four groups of 16-17 year old sudents studying biology at school were invited into a university biology department to discuss a contemporay biomedical research problem, namely the mechanism behind the separation of groups of cells in the embryonic spinal cord of chicks. The students were shown simple slides to stimulate discussion and asked to discuss their explanations and suggest any warrantable evidence. The four group discussions were recorded and transcribed having obtained written permission from all the students to do so. Our analysis is based on normative pragmatics, the construction and use of knowledge through encounters, in this case encounters with utterances by other group members. We mapped this reactualisation and construction of school knowledge on to Chinn and Malhotra’s epistemic and cognitive characteristics of contemporary research science. Our results indicate two distinctive encounters in generating fruitful research ideas. First is when a student generates an analogy, for example, comparing the separation of cells to electrolysis, followed by critical rebuttals from at least two other students which allow for the development of alternative models for comparison. The second is the willingness of the group to accept complexity and raise pointed and specific questions which problematise initial suggestions.for experimental evidence. Discussions which generated fruitful models or evidence involved at least one member of the group refusing to accept consensus and  stimulating others to problematise suggestions. Overall our findings show that school students can engage at a deep level with authentic research, that imagination and critical persistence are more salient than academic knowledge and that one critical and knowledgeable enquirer is essential to actively reactualise knowledge.

Keywords: Authentic science, cell separation, normative pragmatics, knowledge reactualisation;