Using the Concept of Zone of Proximal Development to Explore the Challenges of and Opportunities in Designing Discourse Activities Based on Practical Work

ScienceEducation

Using the Concept of Zoneof Proximal Development to Explorethe Challenges of and Opportunitiesin Designing Discourse ActivitiesBased on Practical Work

IDAR MESTAD,1,2 STEIN DANKERT KOLSTØ1

1Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway;2Faculty of Education, Bergen University College, 5020 Bergen, Norway

Received 6 June 2013; accepted 4 August 2014DOI 10.1002/sce.21139Published online 7 October 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

ABSTRACT: This article reports a study in which two researchers collaborated withfive teachers to facilitate discourse activities aimed to enhance students’ learning frompractical activities. The paper explores how certain teacher practices support or hinderstudents’ learning. Four cases from the study were analyzed in depth using Vygotsky’sconcept “the zone of proximal development” and Wallace’s notion of language authenticity.The analyses indicated that although respected pedagogical principles underlie teaching,students’ use their own prior concepts to a limited degree to express their developingunderstanding of inquiry into scientific phenomena and ideas. The analyses showed howthe teachers emphasized theoretical knowledge and hoped to enable the students to correctlyinterpret their observations and apply scientific theory. However, this emphasis hinderedstudents’ articulations of their developing understanding. The results indicated that workingwithin students’ zones of proximal development during practical activities requires a novelapproach. Based on Wallace’s notion of “third space,” we argue that it is important toencourage students to work with their own authentic language to develop a more scientificlanguage when performing practical work. C© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 98:1054–1076, 2014

Correspondence to: Idar Mestad; e-mail: [email protected]

C© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

DISCOURSE ACTIVITIES BASED ON PRACTICAL WORK 1055

INTRODUCTION

Classroom studies of science lessons often claim that there is a gap between the contri-butions and advice derived from educational research and the manner in which scienceteaching is practiced by teachers in the classroom (Abrahams & Millar, 2008; Dillon &Osborne, 2010; Hand, Yore, Jagger, & Prain, 2010, Lijnse, 1995). This paper addressesthis gap by presenting a developmental research study (Lijnse, 1995) of science class-rooms in which the purpose was to enhance the students’ learning from practical ac-tivities by facilitating discourse activities based on the observations done. The initialaim for our study was to design teaching interventions that could promote students’abilities to formulate conceptual understandings based on experiences from practicalwork.

In the first cycle of our intervention, we observed that the use of teaching strategiesbased on accepted pedagogical principles led to rote learning, guessing, and mimicry.The analysis of the students’ talk and written texts from this initial cycle emphasizes thestudents’ failure to operate within their personal zone of proximal development (ZPD)(Vygotsky, 1978) although the teacher put special effort into scaffolding (Wood, Bruner,& Ross, 1976) the students learning by deliberately employing adapted teaching strategies.This paper presents two cases from this initial cycle, which led us to change the lessondesign. Two cases from a second cycle in our developmental research, in which thesechanges have been applied, are also presented. We suggest that the changed practicesobserved in these two cases illustrated how the ZPD can be used beneficially when viewedas a reminder of the importance of developing a context for students’ discourse activities,which encourages them to operate within their own ZPD when formulating scientificexplanations.

Vygotsky (1978) introduced ZPD when discussing the relationship between learn-ing and development. Vygotsky defined ZPD as the distance between what a childcan independently perform (the actual development level) and the maximum that achild can achieve under guidance (the potential development level). ZPD defines “ac-tivities” that the students can complete under guidance or in collaboration with adultsor more competent peers, and the purpose of these activities is to integrate them intothe child’s prospective actual development level. Thus, the concept of ZPD is a toolto determine the child’s dynamic state “that is just beginning to mature and develop”(p. 87).

ZPD has been considered difficult to apply in the school context because of the practicalchallenges in designing activities that are suitable for each individual in the classroom(Guk & Kellogg, 2007; Mercer & Fisher, 1997). Therefore, ZPD has been infrequentlyused to gain an understanding of classroom practice and has been explained as peripheral inVygotsky’s thinking (Wertsch, 1985) or irrelevant in the school context (Davis & Sumara,2002, p. 417). However, Guk and Kellogg (2007) claim that Vygotsky considered ZPDto be central in his research, even in regard to learning and development in school. Theauthors use Vygotsky’s metaphor of the teacher as a “rickshaw puller” and a “tram driver”(Vygotsky, 1997) to emphasize that the ZPD is about organizing a social environmentmore than it is about the “individual scaffolding of learners” (Guk & Kellogg, 2007,p. 284). This perspective shifts the focus on classroom practice from how to scaffoldstudents’ contributions in explanatory discourse activities to how to facilitate a socialpractice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in which the students are allowed to contribute withintheir own ZPD. Therefore, the ZPD may be considered more closely connected to Lave andWenger’s (1991) concept of “legitimate peripheral participation” than to Bruner’s concept of“scaffolding.”

Science Education, Vol. 98, No. 6, pp. 1054–1076 (2014)

1056 MESTAD AND KOLSTØ

Practical Work

Lunetta, Hofstein, and Clough (2007) define practical work as “learning experiences inwhich students interact with materials or with secondary sources of data to observe andunderstand the natural world.” This definition establishes learning and understanding asthe main purposes of conducting practical scientific activities in school. However, severalclassroom studies have noted several challenges related to students’ learning outcomesfrom practical work. Johnstone (1991) emphasizes the overload problem in some activities,in which no mental capacity remains for students’ interpretations and development of ideasbecause of complex procedural and technical challenges. Sere (2002) stresses that there areoften many different objectives embedded in a single practical activity. She suggests a needfor targeted activities in which the learning objectives are better adapted to the situation.Other researchers have focused on problems related to the implicit assumption that ideascan “emerge” directly from observations (Hodson, 1993; Millar, 2010). The overall picturefrom classroom studies is that teachers and students primarily focus on the practical aspects(e.g., following recipes and handling an apparatus) of conducting a particular activity(Abrahams & Millar, 2008; Hodson, 1993; Lunetta et al., 2007; Tiberghien, Veillard, LeMarechal, Buty, & Millar, 2001).

Despite these challenges, we believe that practical work has considerable potential foranchoring and deepening students’ learning and understanding. Lave and Wenger (1991)claim “abstract representations are meaningless unless they can be made specific to thesituation at hand” (p. 33). Dewey (1916) emphasized that experience, as an empiricalsituation, is a necessary initial stage in students’ thinking. Practical activities that areintended to illustrate natural phenomena can offer such a situation, thus providing studentswith perceptible stimulations that they can refer to in their thinking. According to Dewey(1910), all learning involves both inductive and deductive aspects. Through induction,learners generate interpretative ideas about observations, experiences, and information.Through the deduction of possible consequences, learners can test their newly developedideas by determining consistency with observations and explanations by more competentindividuals. By formulating their own interpretations, the learners can obtain feedback fromother individuals that enable them to strengthen, modify, or refute their own knowledgeand improve their tentative understanding.

Based on this perspective, students must be given the opportunity to not only workwith materials or observations but also attempt to connect these elements to scientificideas or theoretical models about the world by interpreting, explaining, or modeling theirobservations (Tiberghien, 2000). Consequently, connecting the world of objects and worldof ideas (see Figure 1) might be seen as a fundamental purpose of concept-focused practicalwork and fundamental to general conceptual learning in science (Millar, 2010; Millar, LeMarechal, & Tiberghien, 1999; Tiberghien, 2000).

Figure 1. A fundamental purpose of conceptual learning in science: How to help students to construct linksbetween world of events and world of models.



Explaining Observations

Vygotsky (1986) claims that “communication presupposes generalization and develop-ment of word meaning” (p. 7). This implies that students could benefit from communicatingtheir interpretations to others through social interactions, for example, in discussions, pre-sentations, and written tasks. Students’ attempts to represent their observations and inter-pretations of an activity by using speech, written text, drawings, or gestures can help themconstruct meaning and understand interpretative ideas (Tiberghien, 2000). Consequently,the students’ active use of language, in the form of writing and talking about observationsand ideas with other individuals, can be viewed as a crucial component of the practicalactivity (Keys, 1999; Knain, 2008). However, the emergence of a language that connectsevents in observations to explanatory ideas has been described by Roth and Lawless (2002)as a slow and evolutionary process. When newcomers sense and manipulate objects throughhands-on activities, they begin with muddled, incoherent language that incrementally devel-ops into a more mature language. This transition is mediated by object manipulation at thebeginning and subsequently by deictic and iconic gestures that simulate the manipulationsand movements of the objects. Based on this result, Roth and Lawless (2002) argue thatstudents should have the opportunity to describe and explain phenomena in the presence ofobjects and events that can cause these phenomena.

Based on Bereiter and Scardamalia’s (1987) ideas regarding knowledge-transformingwriting, Keys (1999) argued that writing in scientific genres promotes learning by creatinga reflective environment for learners engaged in scientific investigations. When studentsperform closed, prestructured hands-on activities to develop targeted scientific concepts,Keys (1999) maintains that the scientific genre of explanation is highly suitable. This viewis supported by Roth and Lawless’ (2002) above recommendation for how to developstudents’ language in the presence of objects and phenomena. This perspective is alsoconsistent with a perspective that science learning is becoming increasingly competentat participating in discursive practices in which scientific language is used (Hamza &Wickman 2013). Explanation is the genre that scientists’ use to present an understandingof a concept, phenomenon, or observation by using scientific concepts and general ideasthat elucidate the generation of an explanandum (Osborne & Patterson, 2011). The genrecontains both descriptions that aim to identify the phenomenon and the sequence that aimsto explain the phenomenon (Veel, 1997). Thus, this genre has been considered a relevant toolto help students to articulate connections between the world of objects (the phenomenonor explanandum) and world of ideas (the explanation or explanans).

Language Authenticity and the ZPD

In science class, we want students to master a scientific method of conceptualizing theevents in activities (Lemke, 1990). We want students to use scientific language, which manyindicate as challenging and alien (Brown, 2004; Evagorou & Osborne, 2010; Wellington& Osborne, 2001). Using a scientific manner to discuss and think presupposes a masteryof the generalized scientific vocabulary and logical connectives often used by the scientificcommunity to express and connect abstract ideas. If the scientific language differs sub-stantially from the language that students normally use to understand events, it will notfunction as a resource for the students’ understanding because of their inability to “populateit with own intention” (Bakhtin & Holquist, 1981). A scientific way to talk and think aboutevents is, at the outset, outside the students’ ZPD. Consequently, a crucial dilemma is howto organize a social environment (Guk & Kellogg, 2007), in which the students can use alanguage within their own ZPD that helps them to make meaning from observations andsimultaneously develop a more scientific language and manner of thinking.



In the past 15 years, many studies have focused on scaffolding students’ talking andwriting in connection with practical activities. The Science Writing Heuristic developedby Keys, Hand, Prain, and Collins (1999), which combines interpretative writing withopportunities to negotiate meaning, has been an effective strategy to promote thinking andstudents’ integration of scientific ideas with observations from practical activities (Akkus,Gunel, & Hand, 2007; Grimberg & Hand, 2009; Lunetta et al., 2007). McNeill, Lizotte,Krajick, and Marx (2006) have observed that writing scaffolds that support students’ claimjustifications can improve students’ reasoning when they argue in support of claims basedon a practical activity. Nevertheless, it is unclear to what extent the students should beencouraged in their interpretative writing to express personal or canonical scientific views.

Other studies have considered the potential for allowing students to use everyday lan-guage and conceptions as intellectual resources (Ballenger, 1997; Warren, Ballenger,Ogonowski, Rosebery, & Hudicourt-Barnes, 2001) or as a starting point for the meaning-making process (Brown & Spang, 2008; Scott, Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006). We see thisas a method to allow students to use their own formulations to interpret observations.However, we have found Carolyn Wallace’s (2004) concept of language authenticity moreuseful to characterize students talk when expressing personal meaning, well aware that astudent-centered authentic language is often characterized as an everyday or vernacularlanguage. Our understanding is that authenticity refers only to the ownership of languageuse (Wallace, 2004) and not to how it is characterized. According to Wallace, successfulscience learning implies that a student has become able to use a “scientific language tocommunicate personally meaningful scientific events” (p. 903). The student has then in-cluded the scientific vocabulary and manner of talking in their own authentic language,which implies that students express a correct scientific understanding using their newlyextended authentic language.

Research Question and Hypothesis

According to Lijnse (2000), the task of a “developmental research” study is “to seekfor essential improvement and scientific extension” of the teacher’s didactical knowledgeand experience (p. 312). The aim is to develop exemplary practices for teaching particulartopics through cycles of intervention and improvements based on reflection and analyses ofteaching and learning situations. In particular, a developmental research study should studythe language and actions of students and teachers in interactive teaching situations (Lijnse1995, p. 192). The analyses from the initial cycle of our study indicated that our didacticaldesign did not function as intended. However, after the incorporation of two seeminglyminor changes, which explicitly asked the students to generate their own explanations,we observed that the students were able to formulate meaningful interpretations of theirobservations to a much larger degree.

These experiences motivated us to search for possible reasons for the absence of mean-ingful scientific talk discussion and writing at the beginning of the study. Because we believethat the two seemingly minor changes were not content related, the analysis focused onpedagogical practices and not content aspects of the particular topics involved. Thus, our re-search questions focused on teaching situations and characteristics of the students’ languageto explain how our design change affected the students’ explanations:

1. What elements in the observed practices constituted barriers and promoters regardingthe students’ articulations of the connections between theoretical ideas and relevantexperiences and observations?



2. How did the changes in our design change the characteristics of the students’ ex-pressed explanations regarding their observations?

METHOD

Developmental research methodology involves an intervention design and cyclical pro-cess in which an intervention is implemented to improve the design based on an analysisof teaching and learning situations. Thus, the Method section includes a presentation of thedidactical design in addition to a description of the study and selection of the cases, data,and analytical framework.

Didactical Design of the Intervention

The science teachers initially expressed their concern regarding the students’ mediocrelearning outcomes from practical activities. With the cooperation of five different teachers,we wanted to address the above-discussed challenges and opportunities by designing tar-geted (Sere, 2002) science lessons that would encourage students to interpret and explainobservations and thus use talking and writing to develop the ideas expressed.

A number of goals were formulated. To encourage focus on theoretical ideas and si-multaneously avoid overloading the students’ working memory during the practical work(Johnstone & Al-Naeme, 1991; Kirschner, 2002), we decided to provide only a short in-troduction of a few scientific ideas prior to the practical work. Thus, we hoped to facilitateinterplay between observations and ideas during the practical activities and subsequentdiscussions (Abrahams & Millar, 2008, p. 1965). To stimulate engagement and providepossible anchor points for new ideas (Ausubel, 1963), we designed practical work thatwould yield puzzling observations. To provide maximum opportunities for students to fo-cus on observations and interpretations, we used simple experiments that did not involve“black boxes.” To facilitate the students’ development of a scientific language (Keys, 1999;Lemke, 1990; Vygotsky, 1986), a template was used to scaffold their writing together withexplicit teaching regarding the purpose and structure of the explanation genre. By incorpo-rating these well-known didactical notions, we attempted to address the worries expressedby the teachers.

These perspectives led to an initial design that contained the following three elements:

1. Short introduction, which was designed to- focus the students’ attention on theoretical learning goals,- introduce the students to some central concepts to be further developed during the

practical activity, and- avoid cognitive overload and begin within students’ ZPD from the outset.

2. Practical activity. A simple and structured task designed to- provide anchoring observations for theoretical ideas of physical phenomena,- yield puzzling observations to make the students want to generate an explanation,

and- avoid cognitive overload by using simple, targeted activities.

3. Formulation of an explanation in groups, which was designed toencourage the students to discuss observations and interpretations and- stimulate a transformation of their own developing interpretative ideas (by de-

manding adherence to the demands of the explanation genre).



Description of the Study

Cooperation Between the Researchers and Teachers Involved in the Study. The studywas conducted at a school on the west coast of Norway located in areas of mixed rural andsuburban development with medium household incomes. At the beginning of the study, thescience teachers wanted to develop new methods to conduct practical activities to increasestudent learning. Prior to each lesson, the researchers suggested a plan for the lessons basedon the three agreed upon design principles described above and discussed this plan withthe teacher responsible for the lesson. The teachers adjusted these plans as necessary andused them to guide their teaching. After each lesson, the researchers and science teacherdiscussed how the lesson had evolved, the students’ science engagement, and possibleadjustments that might improve lesson design. One of the researchers (the first author) waspresent at all lessons. This researcher compiled field notes and operated the video cameraand sound-recording equipment. Additionally, the researcher participated in the lesson andhelped the students with practical issues or during discussions. In some lessons, the teacherrequested that one of the researchers (the first author) act as a teacher, mainly to obtain abetter understanding of the researchers’ intentions with the lessons.

Description of the Lessons, Teachers, and Students. Twenty-one science lessons wereimplemented over 2 years, each lasting 90 minutes. These lessons involved different ac-tivities and themes and five different science teachers. The teachers in the study had 4–6years of education in science disciplines, and all had more than 5 years of experience asa science teacher. Nineteen lessons were conducted with 11th-grade students in an uppersecondary school, 17 in different vocational programs, and two in general study programs.Two of the final lessons in the final portion of the study (one of them is described in Case4) occurred in a 10th-grade, lower secondary school class. Most of the students were 15or 16 years old, but some were 1 or 2 years older. The number of students present in eachlesson varied between 7 and 28. According to their teachers, most of the students were lowor medium achievers in science.

Case Selection

To address the two research questions, two cases from the first intervention cycle are de-scribed. In these cases, both the students’ oral talk (Cases 1, 3, and 4) and written texts (Case2) are described and analyzed. Our focus was not on the differences between the two modesof articulation, talking, and writing (Halliday, 1993), but on how the teachers’ actions andstudents’ expectations supported or hampered the students’ ability to formulate their owninterpretations. The two cases were selected because there was an absence of meaningfulscientific talk despite the teachers’ strong efforts to help the students contribute with expla-nations. The analysis of the cases led to adjustments in the didactical design and to a secondintervention cycle in which the students’ authentic talk was a larger component of the lesson.

The first case emphasized how expectations embedded in the triadic IRF (Initiation,Response, and Follow-up) dialogues (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) might have affectedthe students’ contributions. This type of classroom interaction is well documented in theliterature (Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Fisher & Larkin, 2008; Lemke, 1990; Wellington &Osborne, 2001) and leaves little room for students’ explorations of their own interpretations(Fisher & Larkin, 2008). It was particularly notable how the students’ absence of priorknowledge regarding scientific content and the teacher’s use of cues affected the IRFdialogue. The science teacher also used this type of dialogue in her other three lessonsduring the first cycle.



The second case was selected because this lesson triggered reflections leading to thechanges in our design, which were implemented in the second cycle of our study. Inthe third case, a template and explicit instructions regarding the explanation genre wereprovided to the students to assist them in writing interpretations of their observations.Nevertheless, the students’ writing mainly focused on procedural descriptions. To supportthe claim regarding the effects of the changes, we characterized the students’ explanationsin two of the five lessons subsequent to the implementation of the two design principleamendments. The first of these second cycle cases was selected because it was from thefirst lesson after the changes were implemented. The second case was selected because itinvolved identical types of changes in the students’ practices although it described a casefrom a different context (school, class, teacher, age).

Data

Data from the 21 lessons in the study included field notes, video recordings from sevenof the lessons, sound recordings from four of the lessons (both from whole-class andgroup discussions), students’ lab reports, informal interviews with all the teachers aftereach lesson, and seven short interviews with the students. The student interviews wereconducted with randomly selected students during the lessons and after two of the lessons.One interview was conducted 2 months after the lessons with two deliberately selectedstudents because of their oral engagement in the Case 1 lesson. A lesson analysis from thefirst cycle of the study was primarily based on the researcher’s (the first author) field notes.No video or sound recordings were performed in these initial lessons partially becausepermission from the students and the students’ parents was not obtained and partiallybecause this method did not appear to be normal at such an early stage of collaborationwith the teachers. Students’ written reports were used in Cases 1 and 2 as secondarysources of data with notes from follow-up conversations with the teachers and short studentinterviews after the lesson.

The analysis of the Case 3 lesson was based on the teacher’s reformulation of the oralexplanations of the students in the whole-class discussions. Field notes were used to describehow the lesson evolved. The Case 4 lesson analysis was primarily based on transcribedvideo and sound recordings from the section of the lesson when the students presented theirexplanations. A shorter interview with two of the students after the lesson and a longervideo-recorded interview with the science teacher after the lesson were used as secondarysources of data.

Analysis

In our analysis of the four cases, we focused on the characteristics of the student’sexpressed explanations and contextual elements to characterize the language authenticity(Wallace, 2004) in the students’ talking and writing. Language authenticity creates anawareness of the fact that learning not only involves the acquisition of new conceptsbut also new methods of discussion (Lemke, 1990). Moreover, according to a Vygotskianunderstanding, concept and language learning cannot be separated because they develop as awhole (Vygotsky, 1986). This principle applies to scientific and general concepts. Thus, thefocus on language authenticity indicated the difficulties that the students encountered whenusing a scientific discourse that differs considerably from the language used to expresspersonal meaning in other nonscience contexts. We then investigated how the students’opportunities to use their own language had consequences for their ability to participatewithin their ZPD. More precisely, our study aimed to understand how the teachers’ and



students’ expectations of certain forms of talking and writing affected their ability tooperate within their own ZPD. We defined the ZPD as language activities that studentscould authentically participate in under adult guidance, thus emphasizing that the studentshad to be an active partner with the adult.

Therefore, we focused on how certain expectations of the teachers and students regardinglanguage use affected the manner in which the students spoke and wrote. The languageexpectations were occasionally stated explicitly by the teacher or the students, but wealso used characteristics of the discourse activities to argue that teacher expectations wereembedded in the structure of the talk. For example, the IRF dialogue (Sinclair & Coulthard,1975) serves to both characterize the class talk and to control the responses provided bythe students (Fisher & Larkin, 2008; Lemke, 1990). The IRF framework describes a triadicdialogue in which the teacher initiates the discussion with a question (I) aimed to obtain aresponse from the students (R), which is then followed up by the teacher (F) (F for follow-up). In the analysis of the first case, we used the IFR framework to identify patterns thatwere presented and discussed with the teacher in a follow-up interview. The analysis alsoaimed to characterize the students’ and teachers’ discourse activities to determine whetherthe students expressed their current understanding of the observations.

In the final three cases, the analysis characterized the students’ explanations. The stu-dents’ presentations of their own explanations from Case 4 were transcribed and codedusing the software Atlas.TI. The aim of this lesson was to help the student connect scien-tific ideas to their observations; therefore, we used Tiberghien’s modeling approach (2000)as a basis for our analysis. We coded statements in which the students expressed theirobservations and ideas. We also addressed how and to what degree the observations andideas were connected in the students’ statements.

In our initial analyses, the difficulties involved in separating observation and ideas in thestudents’ explanations became evident. The major problem was that explicit formulationsof more abstract or general ideas were nearly absent in the students’ explanations (Driver,Leach, Millar, & Scott, 1996; von Aufschnaiter & Rogge, 2010). However, our preliminaryanalysis indicated that the purpose of the students’ explanations was to make sense of thephenomenon that they experienced during the activity, which Osborne and Patterson (2011)described as a key feature of an explanation. This result motivated us to base our analysison the characteristics of the explanation genre and, in particular, examine the structure andpurpose of a scientific explanation as a basis for the analysis of the students’ explanations.

According to Veel (1997), the function of causal explanation is to describe how and whya sequence of events occurs. Thus, the explanation has to begin with phenomenon identi-fication, a description of how the phenomenon occurs to identify what must be explained(also called the explanandum). This description is followed by an explanation sequence inwhich the main purpose is to describe why the phenomenon occurs (which is also calledthe explanans). Because the explanation sequence consists of entities or properties that areoften inaccessible to direct observation, the explanation must contain connection words, orwords that connect the cause-and-effect relationship. Thus, the following codes were usedto characterize the students’ explanations:

- phenomenon identification,- explanation sequence, and- connection words.

These codes were used as a basis to characterize the students’ explanations in Cases 3 and4 and were also used to discuss the absence of phenomenon identification and explanation



sequences in Case 3. In addition, the students’ use of scientific terms, language markers“sort of” and “kind of,” and gestures was also coded (in Case 4).

RESULTS

The First Cycle

In the first cycle of the study, we infrequently observed students engaged in group talk ora whole-class talk about their own observations and interpretations. Therefore, we presentan analysis of two cases from this section of the study, which generated our hypothesis thatcontextual parameters inhibited the students from expressing their current understanding.

Case 1: Students’ Authentic Language Is Hindered by the Teacher’s Focus on Cor-rectness in Discourse. This first case was obtained from the introductory phase of alesson in an 11th-grade vocational class. The teacher of the lesson possessed a master’sdegree in biology and had 17 years of teaching experience. Eleven (10 girls and one boy)of the 13 students were present. The students were supposed to learn about energy conser-vation, the second law of thermodynamics, and heat. These are difficult topics for studentsto understand (Driver & Warrington, 1985; Solomon, 1985). In the introductory phase,the focus was on energy conservation and energy availability and in the main section ofthe lesson the students should have explained how energy was transferred through heat bydiscussing and explaining observations conducted during two simple, practical activitiesand a concept cartoon (Keogh & Naylor, 1999), which was a visual graphic illustrating adiscrepant event.

The teacher began the lesson by reminding the students about the topic in the previouslesson, in which the students had conducted a practical activity using different equipmentto construct different energy chains. The teacher then introduced energy availability (inNorwegian, the term energy quality [energikvalitet] is used) by writing the followingdefinition on the blackboard: “Energy forms with high energy availability can be easilyutilized for work.” The teacher then displayed a Mixmaster, switched it on and off, andinitiated the following dialogue:

Sequence 1.

(1) T: What form of energy do we have in this Mixmaster?(2) S1: Battery energy? (in an inquiring voice)(3) T: Yes or . . . . You can see this cord here . . . (Teacher holds up the cord of the

Mixmaster)(4) S2: Current? (still in a questioning voice)(5) T: Yes, there is current in the cord, but what do you call . . . We use a socket here.

(teacher touches the socket)(6) S3: Electricity.(7) T: Yes, correct. Electrical energy!

The teacher’s initial question asked for “known information” (Nassaji & Wells, 2000);thus there was a correct response to the question. The teacher’s use of cues in the follow-up evaluation, (3) and (5), and her reformulation of the final student’s response, (7),also signaled that only one correct answer would be accepted. Moreover, this expectationappeared to have been understood by the students, who obviously attempted to respond,(2), (4), and (6), with what they hoped would be deemed as correct. Notably, their answers



did not appear to be responses to the question asked at the beginning but to the teacher’scues in (3) and (5).

Obviously, the students did not use their own words and phrases when responding. Achapter test after the lesson contained questions regarding the energy laws, and the teacherexpressed disappointment at the low level of understanding expressed in the students’ re-sponses. Two months after this lesson, two of the students who had suggested answersin the lesson were interviewed. These students openly stated that they had not gained aclear understanding of the ideas taught on this topic. This result confirmed our impressionfrom field observations that the students had only a vague understanding of the scientificideas and concepts involved. During the practical activities, in which the students discussedand explained their observations in groups, we observed that some students discussed howto interpret their observations using their own authentic language. However, this type ofdiscussion disappeared when the students completed their interpretations using a template.On several instances, we observed that instead of formulating their own newly articulatedinterpretations, the students requested that the teacher help in formulating a correct an-swer. For these students, the connection between observations and concepts had not beenachieved, although both the world of observations and world of ideas (Tiberghien, 2000)were available through practical activities (in the previous lesson), teacher demonstrations,and focused theoretical discussions. Nevertheless, the teacher’s use of elicitations (Edwards& Mercer, 1987) allowed the students to participate in the class discussion despite theirabsence of understanding the concepts involved.

IRF dialogues provide the teacher with good control over the conversation but maynot help the students extract scientific meaning (Lemke, 1990). Nevertheless, the partialirrelevance of the students’ contributions indicates that the level of understanding necessaryfor meaningful participation was outside the students’ ZPD in this IRF exchange as inmany other dialogues observed in the first cycle. Consequently, our interpretation is thatthe activities in the lesson built on the implicit idea that the students could “jump” to anew, scientific language—a new method for discussing and viewing the world—based onobservations and a teachers’ blackboard definitions and hints. However, the teacher did notexpress an interest in the students’ uncertain and developing thoughts and understandings,thereby stimulating the students to use their own words and authentic language as a startingpoint. In a short dialogue later in the lesson, this lack of interest in the students’ ownthinking was evident.

Sequence 2.

(8) S (asking): When the level of heat is high, then the energy is low?(9) T: What do you mean? (Confused)

(10) S: When there was a lot of heat, there was less energy?(11) T: It was the availability of energy that was lower.

Notably, in questions (8) and (10), this student was expressing her own interpretation inher own words and revealed that she had confused the terms “amount of energy” and“availability of energy.” However, this situation was not addressed by the teacher to initiatefurther discussion. The teacher responded by specifying the scientifically correct idea again.Both the student’s body language and her responses in an interview 2 months later revealedthat this specification did not clarify the distinction between the two terms.

Nevertheless, in an interview after the lesson, the teacher assumed the IRF dialoguewas productive and the students’ participation was interpreted as involvement in the topic.



Discursive practices with these characteristics were also evident in other lessons in the firstcycle of the study.

Our tentative conclusion is that the students felt that the teacher expected them to speakthe correct scientific language before they had developed the prerequisite understandingand language competence. Consequently, the students chose not to express their currentunderstanding in their own words. The teacher’s scaffolding with cues to the correct re-sponses, which helped the students contribute to the dialogue, hindered their progressionin the stepwise learning processes within their own ZPD.

Case 2: A Demand for Correct Explanations Make Students Formulate a Text TheyConsider Sufficiently Acceptable Instead of Using Their Own Authentic Language.Case 2 was obtained from a lesson led by one of the researchers (the first author). Thetheme of the lesson addressed metabolism and the effect of enzymes. The class consistedof 12 boys and one girl who were enrolled in a vocational study called “Electricity andElectronics.” The teacher was present and participated with comments and input duringand after the lesson. The teacher began with a 7-minute introduction outlining the structureof different types of carbohydrates and the metabolism of glucose in the cell. In this lesson,there was a more explicit focus on scientific explanation as a genre. We taught the studentsabout the explanation genre based on a simplified version of Veel’s (1997) definition of thestructure of a causal explanation: one sequence with a description of what occurred andone sequence with an explanation of the described observations. In addition, the studentswere provided a template to scaffold their writing. The template (see Figure A1 in theAppendix) contained boxes with short guidelines that instructed the students to generatea drawing of their observations and explain what caused the observed phenomenon. Thestudents attempted to write thorough explanations because these explanations would beassessed and approved or disapproved as if they were writing a lab report.

The students then conducted a simple practical activity. First, the students dipped a pieceof filter paper in a potato flour and water mixture. They then placed a path of saliva on thefilter paper and waited 5 minutes to allow the saliva to react with the starch in the potatoflour. Finally, the students dripped some iodine drops on the paper and then observed howthe color of the iodine changed to dark blue except along the saliva path.

After the activity, the researcher observed that some of the students began to write aprocedure description in the template on which they had been asked to write an explanation.The students were again informed that their writing should only describe and explain theirobservations and should not report the procedure. Some students appeared annoyed atthe researcher’s efforts to make them write explanations but continued with the template.Despite the correction, four of the six groups completed an explanation that contained aprocedural description. Only one group (Group 3) used the template as instructed and onlyafter the instructions were repeated. Group 1 described the theory of how the potato istreated in the digestive system, but they did not refer to or describe their observations inthe activity. The explanation from Group 2 was as follows:

We dipped a sheet in starch, and then we drew a smiley face with saliva. Then we drippediodine on it, and the sheet turned purple because there was starch there. We had expectedto see a smiley face, but unfortunately there were only vague traces.

Thus, the text begins with three clauses describing the procedure. These clauses are followedby an observation of the color of the filter paper. This observation is explained by stating that“there was starch there” (implicitly indicating that iodine turns purple when dripped onto



starch). The final statement describes how the experiment failed to provide the “correct”observations.

Group 6 provided only a procedural description with no description of the results orexplanatory ideas:

We were given a Petri dish with filter paper in which we were to use in a practical exerciseabout starch. We took a cotton swab and added saliva and started to write on the filter paper.We took a five minute break to wait for the result, then we added iodine and let it distributeuntil some results were shown.

Groups 4 and 5 also described the procedure but devoted more space to explaining theirobservations. The ideas presented in their explanations were identical to Group 3.

Regarding the content of the explanations, two scientific “labels” were used: starch andiodine. The only idea that was recorded was that iodine reacts with starch. None of theanticipated scientific concepts were used despite the introduction, the template, and thecall for correct explanations. To further explain their observation of the saliva patch, thestudents should also have included ideas about the reaction between the enzymes in salivaand starch and that iodine does not react with sugar. Only one of the six groups (Group 5)included these two elements in their explanation:

The purple color was because the iodine found in starch. If the experiment had succeeded,it would have broken down the starch, and the iodine would not have reacted on that area.

Our attempts to help the students explain their observations resulted in texts that mainlycontained a procedural description. In retrospect, the students were not explicitly informedto offer their own explanation, although the teacher wanted this outcome (in this casethe researcher). Instead, the researcher pressured the students by conveying that theirexplanations would be assessed as seriously as an ordinary lab report. The intended purposewas to stress the importance of the explanation to emphasize the seriousness of the writingtask. However, from the students’ perspective, this emphasis might have been perceived as ademand that the explanations should be as good as possible (i.e., scientifically correct). Thisinterpretation was supported by the fact that Group 1 recorded the relevant theory withoutreferring to the observations performed. Four of the other groups appeared to have revertedto their habitual method of writing a lab report instead of connecting the observations andexplanatory scientific concepts.

Descriptions of the procedure and observations are components of the genre or textualnorm for how the students are expected to write (Knain, 2005) following a practicalactivity. The teacher confirmed that these components were elements of the lab reportsthat the students typically wrote. Our emphasis on the explanation section in the templaterequired a shift from the students’ habitual practices. This genre shift and interference withtheir habits may have caused the annoyed reaction that was observed.

The students’ written explanations and discussions showed that few students expressedreflection processes involving language and cognitive development, and most did not preferto use new words or ideas at risk of using them incorrectly. We believe that the studentschose to write a text that they assumed would be accepted by the teacher as useful scientificwork. The focus on correct scientific understanding in the teacher’s presentation and thestudents’ interpretation of the situation might explain the students’ strategies.

Again, our tentative conclusion was that the students felt that the teacher expected themto express their understanding in approximately correct scientific language before their ownlanguage and understanding had developed this far. Consequently, and despite the intent,



most students did not attempt to express their current understanding in their own words.Again, the students were most likely hindered in entering into a stepwise learning processwithin their own ZPD.

Second Cycle: Changing the Design. Allowing the Students Space toWork With Their Authentic Language

The written reports from the initial section of the study caused us to change the designbased on the minimal success in our attempts to help the students use their own words.Two seemingly minor changes were performed to the lesson design to reduce the students’focus on correct explanations:

1. The students’ own ideas and explanations were explicitly required. Instead of in-forming the students that their explanations would be assessed, we informed themthat the purpose of the writing task was to formulate their own understanding. Thestudents had to follow the structure of the explanation genre, but the template wasalso adjusted to include a sentence that explicitly asked the students to record theirown tentative explanation.

2. The students were informed that their own explanations should be stated on the black-board when requested but not handed in. Each of the student groups presented theirexplanation, and the teacher recorded them on the blackboard without questioningthe content or use of terms. Subsequently, the explanations on the blackboard wereused as a basis for a class discussion aimed to further develop the students’ initialarticulations.

In the four lessons, subsequent to the incorporation of the two design changes, we observedimproved engagement in formulating an interpretation of their observations. We emphasizedthree characteristics of the students’ explanations that we perceived as results of the designchange:

1. Students expressed their own interpretations.2. Student explanations were more close to Veel’s causal explanation.3. There was a more explorative use of language (Case 4).

Case 3: Requiring and Emphasizing Students Own Explanations. This third case wasa lesson that occurred immediately after the lesson described in Case 2. The identical activity(starch and saliva) was led by the identical teacher (the first author) in another class in theidentical vocational program and addressed the identical theme (the digestive system). Fivedifferent student groups conducted the activity and based on a group discussion, recordeda tentative explanation on the template provided. In a subsequent whole-class sequence,all the groups orally presented their explanations and the teacher recorded them on theblackboard as close as possible to the students’ wording (Figure 2).

Three of the explanations in Figure 2, (1), (2), and (4), contain descriptions of theobserved colors. All five explanations contained theoretical elements that were not directlyvisible for the students, and none of the five explanations contained procedural descriptions,which was in contrast to most of the explanations in Case 2. The first two explanations weresimilar and emphasized that the saliva dissolved the starch. The third explanation confirmedthe idea of the preceding two explanations and added another explanatory idea. Thisexplanation focused on the reaction between iodine and starch and the absence of a reactionbetween iodine and monosaccharaides. Additionally, the explanation explicitly stated that



Figure 2. The blackboard explanations as recorded by the teacher based on the students’ oral presentations to theclass.

the polysaccharides were dissolved into monosaccharaides by the saliva, thus using morescientific concepts in place of starch and glucose. This explanation did not contain anydescriptions of the observations, most likely because it was deemed unnecessary becausethe observations were described by previous groups. The fourth explanation contained abrief description of the observations and explanatory ideas presented earlier by Group 3 butstated that “the saliva broke down the starch.” In contrast to the previous groups, this groupdid not use the verb dissolved. This explanation was followed by the fifth group, whichnoted that the starch was broken down by enzymes. The use of “it” and “break down”indicated that this contribution was additional to the explanation from the fourth group.

The explanations also contained consequential conjunctions such as “because,” “thus,”and “therefore.” In Explanation 1, the conjunction “because” served as a linguistic resourcethat connected the observational description to the explanatory entities (Veel, 1997). InExplanations 3 and 4, the conjunctions “thus,” “because,” and “therefore” were used toconnect different theoretical elements.

The teacher emphasized that the fourth and fifth explanations used the term “broke down,”whereas the previous three explanations used the term “dissolved.” When the teacher askedthe class which term they preferred, several students responded that “broke down” wasthe most appropriate. When considering the fifth group’s statement that “it is enzymesthat breaks down,” the teacher asked for the name of the enzyme, and one of the studentsresponded “diastase.” Nearly all of the students in the class participated in these dialogues.

Case 4: Changing the Context. Case 4 was obtained from a lesson conducted in thesecond project school. A 10th-grade class in a lower secondary school in Norway where9 girls and 12 boys learned the concept of friction. The students were described by theirteachers as easy to engage in whole-class discussions but did not prefer writing tasks.The science teacher had been a teacher for 28 years and was well respected by both hercolleagues and students. This teacher had also been a former colleague of one of theresearchers (the first author).

The concept of friction was introduced based on a teacher demonstration of differentobjects sliding down an inclined plane and a full-class discussion. The students thenconducted a practical activity. Nine different groups fastened a coin between the drawerand case of an empty matchbox (see Figure 3). The students then tapped the matchboxrepeatedly on a table (Activity 1). This action caused the coin to gradually disappear intothe matchbox. Subsequently, the students held the box in the air while they hit it with a ruler(Activity 2). For each hit, the coin slowly rose from the box (see Figure 4). The students



Figure 3. The coin disappears into the box as the box is tapped on the desk.

Figure 4. The coin reappears when the box is hit with a ruler.

were informed that their task was to generate explanations for the two observations, writethem on the template provided, and present them as input for a whole-class discussion.

During the activity, the teacher walked around and listened to and discussed the interpre-tations of the different groups. Altogether, the class used 21 minutes to conduct, discuss,and record a preliminary explanation for why the coin disappeared and rose in the twoactivities. Transcriptions of the oral presentations of these explanations were coded andcategorized based on Veel’s characterization of causal explanations. First, all nine groupspresented an explanation for Activity 1, and then an explanation for Activity 2. This timethe teacher recorded an extract of the students’ explanations on the blackboard.

First, similar to Case 1 (see p. 1064), we observed that the students were activelydiscussing their own interpretation of the observations during the activity. However, incontrast to what was observed in Case 1, the students did not ask the teacher to help themformulate a correct explanation on the template. Such demands for a correct explanationwere often experienced in the first cycle of the study. Instead, the students repeated theactivity simultaneously as they discussed and recorded the explanations.

Second, we observed several characteristics in the students’ explanations that supportour experiences immediately after the design change. Most of the students’ explanationscontained the identical main characteristics as Veel’s causal explanations: phenomenonidentification, causal entities, and connecting resources. In some of the explanations, thestudents focused on the event details and the movement of the objects involved in the



phenomenon, which indicated that the explanations were based on careful observations ofthe phenomenon:

Martin: When you hold the match box in the air, and have the coin inside . . . and then youhit it . . . Then the match box goes down, . . . but simultaneously then sort of you squeezeit, or not squeeze but holds it. The only thing that goes down is sort of the match box, butthe coin inside will sort of remain. Then it will go sort of . . . then . . . . . . sort of . . .

In other explanations, the students also used scientific terms and focused on object descrip-tions and interactions:

(1) Malin: eeeh .. So when you knock the box against the table, then the coin goes downbecause the surface is smooth, like in that one,

(2) Victoria: so it becomes friction(3) Malin: It is smooth, so that it . . .(4) Teacher: Becomes friction ..?(5) Malin: So . . . the surface on that thing(6) Victoria: The drawer sort of(7) Malin: Yes, it is smooth, so that the coin slides by . . .

Third, in nearly all the explanations, the students frequently used the language markers “sortof” and “like,” and they also accompanied their talk with iconic gestures that illustrated theform and movement of the objects. Their explanations contained hesitations and thoughtbreaks, and the students seldom used scientific terms similar to a scientist (it becomes fric-tion (2)). Altogether the students’ explanations consisted of approximately full sentences,similar to the genre structure and anchored in observations. There were dialogues and rea-soning that consisted of chained utterances. However, the explanations were also falteringand unfinished utterances with hesitations, gestures, and a tentative use of scientific termsconsistent with Roth and Lawless’ (2002) description of a tentative and explorative useof language. The explanations from the final two groups exemplified a more frequent useof scientific terms. This explanation and term usage was faltering and searching, but thestudents were also closer to the correct scientific use of the terms.

(1) Jonathan: When you hit the box downwards [moves both hands downwards], then itstops like this. But the other one has still potential energy or what you call it. And itgets more force than the other and it shoves through the slit . . .

(2) Karl Ove: Yes, so the whole thing then has potential energy . . . no, not potentialenergy but kinetic energy, and then the kinetic energy stops in the box, but not in thecoin, it continues.

In a group interview after the lesson, three randomly selected students characterized thelesson as instructive. Primarily, the students claimed it was important to base their under-standing on practical concepts instead of reading the textbook. One student formulated theexplanation in the following manner (translated from Norwegian): “ . . . or that you first doit, and then consider for yourself what we have observed.”

The interviewer (the first author) then asked whether a lesson that began with a practicalactivity directly followed by a teacher explanation would work. The identical studentresponded: “But, you don’t get to consider yourself. Then it has been pointless, if you havenot thought for yourself what you have performed, in a way.”

Two other practical activities were performed in two other classes using the identicaldidactical design and emphasizing the two previously mentioned design amendments.



In these lessons, we observed the identical degree of engagement in the students whenformulating and improving their own explanatory texts to interpret the observations.

How Did the Design Changes Cause Changes in the DiscourseActivity?

After implementing the two changes, we observed a shift in the students’ discussions.First, instead of mainly presenting procedures and scientific facts, there were more at-tempts to formulate scientific explanations. These attempts were imprecise and somewhatincomplete, but such shortcomings indicated that the students were honestly expressingtheir current understanding of their observations in their own words as the teacher hadrequested (Change 1, p. 1067). Additionally, the students did not ask the teacher to helpthem formulate a correct response. By informing the students that their explanations wouldbe written on the blackboard, whatever their flaws (Change 2, p. 1067), the students mostlikely realized that their own tentative ideas and personal language and expressions wouldbe appreciated. This claim was supported by the student’s interview following Case 4,which emphasized the importance of their own thinking and own consideration of whatthey observed. Second, the students’ explanation contained the identical genre characteris-tics as Veel’s causal explanation, including phenomenon identification, a description of theexplanatory entities, and the use of connecting words.

Third, the students’ explanations to the entire class were characterized by word-rich, fal-tering, and unfinished explanations and were accompanied by language markers, gestures,hesitation, and the unscientific use of scientific terms, which indicated that the studentswere testing their own interpretations and language use.

The final two cases did not involve students from the first cases, and the increasedengagement in formulating explanatory ideas could be attributed to individual differencesin the students’ ability, the class culture, or their learning history.

DISCUSSION

In our study, the aim of the lesson design was to help the students connect scientificideas to experiences gained from a practical activity by facilitating students’ languagedevelopment through oral or written explanations. In the first cycle, the design principlesincluded a short and focused introduction, simple activity, and template to help the studentsdiscuss interpretations and formulate explanations. However, this design did not functionas intended and did not help the students interpret the observed phenomenon (Osborne& Patterson, 2011). Instead, the students’ contributions indicated that they focused onproviding the expected responses to the task. By contrast, in the final lessons of our study,the students were explicitly informed that their contributions would not be assessed and thatthey should use their own language to formulate initial explanations of their observations.The students’ tentative explanations were recorded on the blackboard and used in a classdiscussion of ideas that could explain the observations from the practical activity. In theselessons, the students’ explanations contained observations and descriptions of invisibleexplanatory elements. These elements were linguistically connected, thus indicating thatthe students used the explanatory ideas to interpret the phenomenon. Finally, the students’demands for help to formulate correct responses, which were often observed in the firstcycle of the study, disappeared.



Carolyn Wallace (2004)1 used the English philosopher Homi Bhabha’s notion of adialogic third space to describe how new language and concepts could be developed bynegotiating meaning in the science classroom. Wallace’s third space is a space/time locationin which both student-centered authenticity and subject-matter authenticity are allowed.By definition, both students’ everyday language and specialized scientific language andideas are used in this space, and both languages are legitimate. However, in the third space,the participant aims to move beyond and develop their current language authenticities andconceptual understanding. The teacher attempts to understand and utilize the students’ideas, whereas the students attempt to understand and use the teachers’ scientific ideas.Thus, the third space is an “in-between space” (p. 907), in which different meanings arepresent, listened to, and evaluated, and new language or terms are tested. Metaphorically,the students’ language “must travel through the third space” (p. 908) to develop increasedscientific authenticity. This journey begins with a focus on student-centered authenticity,in which the students’ authentic understanding is heard and treated as legitimate, althoughit differs from the authoritative understanding shared by the scientific community (Scottet al., 2006; Wallace, 2004).

In the initial two cases presented, the students did not enter into the third space. Inthe first case (on energy quality), entry into the third space was most likely hindered bythe fact that the concepts were difficult and the teacher’s focus on the correctness of thestudents’ contributions in the time allocated for student discourse and negotiations keptthe students outside of their ZPD. In the second case (writing explanations), the spaceprovided for students to develop and express new understandings using their own wordswas partially distorted because of the students’ interpretations of the situation, whichappeared to cause them to focus on what the teacher would approve as a good explanation.In the final two cases, the students were explicitly requested to explain the observations intheir own words. In addition, the teachers attempted to eliminate signals that would makethe students afraid of negative consequences for incorrect responses. Thus, the studentswere not asked to produce a report or submit their written explanations. In lessons withthese parameters, we observed that the students discussed and formulated explanatoryideas using their own authentic language and attempting to incorporate scientific ideas.The students formulated tentative connections between their observations and explanatoryideas. Because the students formulated their own thoughts using their own language, theyworked within their ZPD. The entrance to the third space was accessible to these studentsby providing them with the opportunity to begin to express their interpretations with theirown authentic language.

Asking for students’ own explanations is not a prerequisite for concept learning inscience. Obviously, students can learn from many different types of teaching. However,we suggest that for many students, focusing on correct responses during the learningprocess and before students have grasped new understandings can explain why studentsin the initial two cases did not enter into constructive scientific discourse in the observedlessons. Although we cannot state how common this phenomenon is, our results suggestthe necessity for further inquiry into the conditions that facilitate students’ engagement inproductive disciplinary talk (Engle & Conant, 2002), in which their tentative and exploratoryexplanations can be tested and improved. In addition, this design allowed the teacher togain additional information about the students’ actual level of understanding and languagedevelopment (Vygotsky, 1978), which could construct future activities. Black and Wiliam(2009) consider classroom discussions that elicit evidence of students’ understanding to

1Carolyn Wallace is also Carolyn Keys, who is also referred to in the text.



be a crucial aspect for providing feedback that propels the learner forward. One possiblemethod to further develop the students’ scientific language was attempted by encouragingthe students to review and discuss the differences between the explanations recorded on theblackboard.

If our hypothesis is correct, our understanding of the idea of students’ ZPD might haveto be refined. It is not simply a question of whether a concept is within or outside astudent’s ZPD, which may indicate that this division is not possible to apply in practice.What is important is that the students’ are encouraged to base their thinking in their currentunderstanding of old and new ideas and authentic language. It is also important for studentsto remain in the learning process and refrain from attempting to formulate correct responsesbefore an understanding of the ideas and scientific methods of expressing these conceptshas begun to emerge.

APPENDIX

Figure A1. This template was given to the students to scaffold their written explanation.



This research was part of the project Students as Researchers in science education funded by theNorwegian Research Council (grant NFR/182875).

REFERENCES

Abrahams, I., & Millar, R. (2008). Does practical work really work? A study of the effectiveness of practicalwork as a teaching and learning method in school science. International Journal of Science Education, 30(14),1945 – 1969.

Akkus, R., Gunel, M., & Hand, B. (2007). Comparing an inquiry based approach known as the science writingheuristic to traditional science teaching practices: Are there differences? International Journal of ScienceEducation, 29(14), 1745 – 1765.

Ausubel, D. P. (1963). The psychology of meaningful verbal learning: An introduction to school learning. NewYork: Grune & Stratton.

Bakhtin, M., & Holquist, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.Ballenger, C. (1997). Social identities, moral narratives, scientific argumentation: Science talk in a bilingual

classroom. Language and Education, 11(1), 1 – 14.Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1987). The psychology of written composition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment, Evalu-

ation and Accountability (formerly: Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education), 21(1), 5 – 31.Brown, B. A. (2004). Discursive identity: Assimilation into the culture of science and its implications for minority

students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(8), 810 – 834.Brown, B. A., & Spang, E. (2008). Double talk: Synthesizing everyday and science language in the classroom.

Science Education, 92(4), 708 – 732.Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2002). Constructivist discourses and the field of education: Problems and possibilities.

Educational Theory, 52(4), 409 – 428Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston: D. C. Heath.Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York:

Macmillan.Dillon, J., & Osborne, J. (2010). Good practice in science teaching: What research has to say (2nd ed.). Maidenhead,

England: Open University Press.Driver, R., Leach, J., Millar, R., & Scott, P. (1996). Young people’s images of science. Maidenhead, England:

Open University Press.Driver, R., & Warrington, L. (1985). Students’ use of the principle of energy conservation in problem situations.

Physics Education, 20(4), 171 – 176.Edwards, D., & Mercer, N. (1987). Common knowledge: The development of understanding in the classroom.

London: Methuen.Engle, R. A., & Conant, F. R. (2002). Guiding principles for fostering productive disciplinary engagement:

Explaining an emergent argument in a community of learners classroom. Cognition and Instruction, 20(4),399 – 483.

Evagorou, M., & Osborne, J. (2010). The role of language in the learning and teaching of science. In J. Osborne &J. Dillon (Eds.), Good practice in science teaching. What research has to say (2nd ed.). Maidenhead, England:Open University Press.

Fisher, R., & Larkin, S. (2008). Pedagogy or ideological struggle? An examination of pupils’ and teachers’expectations for talk in the classroom. Language and Education, 22(1), 1 – 16.

Grimberg, B. I., & Hand, B. (2009). Cognitive pathways: Analysis of students’ written texts for science under-standing. International Journal of Science Education, 31(4), 503 – 521.

Guk, I., & Kellogg, D. (2007). The ZPD and whole class teaching: Teacher-led and student-led interactionalmediation of tasks. Language Teaching Research, 11(3), 281 – 299.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1993). Language and the order of nature. In M. A. K. Halliday & J. R. Martin (Eds.), Writingscience: Literacy and discursive power. London: The Falmer Press.

Hamza, K. M., & Wickman, P. O. (2013), Supporting students’ progression in science: Continuity between theparticular, the contingent, and the general. Science Education, 97(1), 113 – 138.

Hand, B., Yore, L. D., Jagger, S., & Prain, V. (2010). Connecting research in science literacy and classroompractice: A review of science teaching journals in Australia, the UK and the United States, 1998 – 2008. Studiesin Science Education, 46(1), 45 – 68.

Hodson, D. (1993). Re-thinking old ways: towards a more critical approach to practical work in school science.Studies in Science Education, 22(1), 85 – 142.



Johnstone, A. H. (1991). Why is science difficult to learn? Things are seldom what they seem. Journal ofComputer-Assisted Learning, 7(2), 75 – 83.

Johnstone, A. H., & Al-Naeme, F. F. (1991). Room for scientific thought? International Journal of ScienceEducation, 13(2), 187 – 192.

Keogh, B., & Naylor, S. (1999). Concept cartoons, teaching and learning in science: An evaluation. InternationalJournal of Science Education, 21(4), 431 – 446.

Keys, C. W. (1999). Revitalizing instruction in scientific genres: Connecting knowledge production with writingto learn in science. Science Education, 83(2), 115 – 130.

Keys, C. W., Hand, B., Prain, V., & Collins, S. (1999). Using the science writing heuristic as a tool for learning fromlaboratory investigations in secondary science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(10), 1065 – 1084.

Kirschner, P. A. (2002). Cognitive load theory: Implications of cognitive load theory on the design of learning.Learning and Instruction, 12(1), 1 – 10.

Knain, E. (2005). Identity and genre literacy in high-school students’ experimental reports. International Journalof Science Education, 27(5), 607 – 624.

Knain, E. (2008). Skriving omkring praktisk arbeid i naturfag. [Writing about practical work in school science.]In J. Smidt & R. Trøite Lorentzen (Eds.), Skriving i alle fag [Writing in all subjects] (pp. 215 – 227). Oslo,Norway: Universitetsforlaget.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press.

Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Lijnse, P. (1995). “Developmental research” as a way to an empirically based “didactical structure” of science.

Science Education, 79(2), 189 – 199.Lijnse, P. (Ed.). (2000). Didactics of science: The forgotten dimension in science education research? Buckingham,

England: Open University Press.Lunetta, V. N., Hofstein, A., & Clough, M. P. (2007). Learning and teaching in the school science laboratory: An

analysis of research, theory and practice. In S. Abell & N. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of reasearch on scienceeducation (pp. 393 – 442). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

McNeill, K. L., Lizotte, D. J., Krajcik, J., & Marx, R. W. (2006). Supporting students’ construction of scientificexplanations by fading scaffolds in instructional materials. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(2), 153 – 191.

Mercer, N., & Fisher, E. (1997). The importance of talk. In R. Wegerif & P. Scrimshaw (Eds.), Computers andtalk in the primary classroom (pp. 13 – 21). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Millar, R. (2010). Practical work. In J. Osborne & J. Dillon (Eds.), Good practice in science teaching (2nd ed.,pp. 108 – 134). Glasgow, Scotland: Open University Press.

Millar, R., Le Marechal, J.-F., & Tiberghien, A. (1999). “Mapping” the domain—varieties of practical work. InJ. Leach & A. C. Paulsen (Eds.), Practical work in science education (pp. 33 – 59). Frederiksberg, Denmark:Roskilde University Press.

Nassaji, H., & Wells, G. (2000). What’s the use of “triadic dialogue”?: An investigation of teacher – studentinteraction. Applied Linguistics, 21(3), 376 – 406.

Osborne, J. F., & Patterson, A. (2011). Scientific argument and explanation: A necessary distinction? ScienceEducation, 95(4), 627 – 638.

Roth, W. M., & Lawless, D. (2002). Scientific investigations, metaphorical gestures, and the emergence of abstractscientific concepts. Learning and Instruction, 12(3), 285 – 304.

Scott, P., Mortimer, E., & Aguiar, O. G. (2006). The tension between authoritative and dialogic discourse: Afundamental characteristic of meaning making interactions in high school science lessons. Science Education,90(4), 605 – 631.

Sere, M. G. (2002). Towards renewed research questions from the outcomes of the European project Labwork inScience Education. Science Education, 86(5), 624 – 644.

Sinclair, J. B., & Coulthard, R. M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: The English used by teachers andpupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Solomon, J. (1985). Teaching the conservation of energy. Physics Education, 20(4), 165 – 170.Tiberghien, A. (2000). Designing teaching situations in the secondary school. In R. Millar, J. Leach, & J. Osborne

(Eds.), Improving science education: The contribution of research (pp. 27 – 47). Buckingham, England: OpenUniversity Press.

Tiberghien, A., Veillard, L., Le Marechal, J. F., Buty, C., & Millar, R. (2001). An analysis of labwork tasks usedin science teaching at upper secondary school and university levels in several European countries. ScienceEducation, 85(5), 483 – 508.

Veel, R. (1997). Learning how to mean—scientifically speaking: Apprenticeship into scientific discourse in thesecondary school. In F. Christie & J. R. Martin (Eds.), Genre and institutions: Social processes in the workplaceand school (pp. 161 – 195). London: Cassel.



von Aufschnaiter, C., & Rogge, C. (2010). Misconceptions or missing conceptions? Eurasia Journal of Mathe-matics, Science & Technology Education, 6(1), 3 – 18.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). Collected works, volume 3. New York: Plenum Press.Wallace, C. S. (2004). Framing new research in science literacy and language use: Authenticity, multiple dis-

courses, and the “Third Space.” Science Education, 88(6), 901 – 914.Warren, B., Ballenger, C., Ogonowski, M., Rosebery, A. S., & Hudicourt-Barnes, J. (2001). Rethinking diversity

in learning science: The logic of everyday sense-making. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(5),529 – 552.

Wellington, J., & Osborne, J. (2001). Language and literacy in science education. Buckingham, England: OpenUniversity Press.

Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology

and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89 – 100.


Documents

Using the Concept of Zone of Proximal Development to Explore the Challenges of and Opportunities in Designing Discourse Activities Based on Practical Work