However, in science there is a tendency for teachers to provide any old activity rather than to choose an activity that meets specific learning outcomes in relation to scientific enquiry (Roden, 2005). This consequently means that children are not getting the most out of their science education due to not having the chance to use scientific enquiry skills. For this reason, teachers should have an understanding of what skills and knowledge need to be developed for scientific enquiry including the use of talk and building on prior knowledge and experiences of the world around them, in order for effective learning to occur. Constructivism sees learning as a
They need to internalise and develop science concepts successively. This normally happens when students are capable of investigating and searching for solutions on these scientific notions. Scientific inquiry approach allows students to explore, observe, analyse, and question current studies, to which will leads them to develop a deeper understanding of certain concepts. Smith et. al., (2007) state that inquiry requires “the identification of assumptions, use of critical and logical thinking and consideration of alternative explanations.” Thus, all students, regardless of their abilities, need to be motivated and interested in order to develop better attitudes to succeed in the content area of science.
Scientific literacy is the ability to use the scientific process of logical deduction in everyday life. This has made it very important in modern society ever since the 16th century. As Hurd (1997) states, important figures throughout history such as Thomas Jefferson, James Wilkinson and Herbert Spencer have advocated for an education that propagates scientific literacy as an important building block of society. However, there is a massive debate regarding the medium this propagation should take place. There are two sides to the debate, the first being the teachers who use typical teaching mechanisms to advocate scientific literacy while the other side are the teachers who prefer the unconventional instead (Balraj & Pandian, 2010).
Reason plays a very vital and important role in the area of natural sciences. Knowledge claims made in natural sciences compared to other areas since they have solid evidence to back the knowledge claims made. The sciences use both deductive and inductive reasoning though they use more of inductive reasoning, where knowledge claims made are based on repetitive past observations. The scientific method requires one to have a set of observations, using inductive reasoning to
Better conceptual framework of scientific knowledge and scientist’s reasoning and argumentation is helpful for learning the scientific content. b. Explicit understanding of the scientific concepts and principles is at the core of modern citizenry. The people have to learn the latest concepts in order to lead a successful
For writing the focus of ideas is important in conveying a message to the audience. The scientific articles depth can be illustrated by its twelve pages of writing, expressing depth in various manners of complexity and length. True scientific knowledge is expected when the scientific article displays graphs, tables and charts on pages 3-11, with an expectation of ability to read such complicated graphics.The scientific article takes an complex focus approach to detailing “tests”. “Methods”, “real time quality control”, “cell culture” and “analysis”(Mi et al). These headings have a field specific focus relating only to scientists.
The main findings drawn from this study indicates that teachers need to be conscious of students’ epistemological orientation towards scientific knowledge, and to complement these preferences when designing learning experiences, especially to provide constructivist based lessons to enhance science learning for students who are epistemologically constructivist
Scientific knowledge finds application in industry and in the development of further theories. To a physicist whose work involves drawing from the existing theories to probe deeper into nature through development of further theories, every single theory in the natural sciences ought to be very valuable; from Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Because of the nature of the evolution of scientific knowledge- scientists build on past theories, discard the ones that fail tests and assume new ones in their replacement- it is not unexpected that even the discarded theories are so well regarded by scientists; for even those theories did pave the way for more correct ones. This reasoning shows that even when a piece of scientific knowledge no longer finds application, as is the case with the geocentric model which is no longer used to describe the universe, its value in the eyes of the scientists remains
Epistemic Knowledge -what is it and why is it important? Epistemic knowledge is a knowledge of building knowledge itself, the crucial components of involved in the process of building knowledge and the capacity of justifying the knowledge produced by science such as a hypothesis, a theory or an observational claims(diSessa, 1993; Duschl, 2007). Epistemic knowledge plays a paramount role on how we know what we know. Such knowledge enables to understand the nature of science(diSessa, 1993). Understanding nature of science demands to identify scientific theory from hypothesis as well as scientific facts from observations (Hammer, 1994; Laudato, 2010).
From the point of view of natural sciences, doubt has widened our knowledge through research. Doubtfulness leads scientists to formulate theories and ideas that are researched in depth, often leading to multiple experiments to come to a conclusion. We are able to understand that doubt plays a big role in knowledge of Religion and Natural sciences. We can also know that doubt is able to construct a barrier between ourselves and knowledge in certain circumstances. The more we know, the more we are able to discuss, to examine, and to evaluate something on a deeper