Het vormfunctieperspectief als leerdoel van natuuronderwijs : leren kijken door de ontwerpersbril

Abstract

The perspective of form and function as an objective of primary science education

Selection of content in primary science education is complicated because of the following factors: firstly, science educators can choose from an almost endless amount of possible subjects without a clear conceptual structure, and secondly, science educators should leave room for students to formulate and investigate their own questions. This leads to the question how students and teachers can be assisted both in the structuring of content and in the formulating of their own questions. In this research, the use of perspectives is proposed as a solution to this problem. Perspectives are defined as domain-specific thinking and working strategies which experts use in their practice. Examples of perspectives in biology are the perspective of form and function and the perspective of unity and diversity. Perspectives indicate the questions experts ask, as well as the heuristics that they use to answer them. By teaching perspectives as a metacognitive strategy, students could learn which questions can be asked of the phenomena, and where they can start to find an answer. Perspectives could also provide a conceptual structure which can be used to link and structure different learning experiences. The possibility to acquire perspectives as a metacognitive strategy has been investigated by elaborating the perspective of form and function as an example. The research question was formulated as follows: How can elementary school students acquire the perspective of form and function as a metacognitive strategy? This question has been investigated by developmental research, in which a learning and teaching strategy was developed and tested in practice in three primary science classes with students around age 11. The first step in the development of the learning and teaching strategy was to investigate and compare the content of the perspective of form and function in biological research and in technical design. Both biologists and designers use several - and sometimes similar - ways of reasoning between form and function, which is indicated as hither and tither thinking . It proved possible to describe the perspective of form and function for both biological research and for technical design in one model. The next step was to translate this model in objectives of science education and develop a learning and teaching strategy to acquire the perspective of form and function. This was further elaborated in a scenario which described in detail the planned learning process. A scheme, based on the perspective of form and function, was introduced to structure and link the different experiences in the scenario. The scenario stimulated students in design activities, both in creating technical and biological designs. Students were able to defend their designs, and comment on other designs, during which discourse they showed several types of the predicted reasoning between form and function. Much more guidance was needed during discourses on existing designs, especially when is was not possible to compare the design with real alternatives. Students had problems discussing existing biological designs, and sometimes found these discussions useless. The students acquired parts of the perspective of form and function, but not sufficient to use the perspective as an instrument to construct new knowledge independently.