Reading Check
Using Experiences, Patterns, and Explanations to make School Science more like Scientists’ Science. Kristin L. Gunckel The second grade students were busily tapping their tuning forks on various objects in the classroom. Many were tapping on desks, chairs, or books, then holding the tuning forks to their ears to hear the hum. One student accidentally touched the tuning fork to his earlobe, then jumped back with a surprised look on his face from the “tickle” he felt on his ear. Another student dipped her tuning fork into a plastic cup of water and was thrilled to see that the water splashed out of the cup. A third student excitedly showed her friend what happened when she touched a piece of popcorn with a tuning fork and the popcorn “buzzed” around in the cup. This lesson was part of an activity sequence that took place over several days. The class was learning about sound and how we hear sounds. In addition to exploring with tuning forks, they had also made drums from coffee cans and plastic wrap, then observed what happened to rice on the surface of the drum when the drum was struck with a drumstick. Later, they watched what happened to the rice on the surface of the drum when a nearby drum was struck with a drumstick.
These students were gaining experiences with sounds and vibrations. Many teachers recognize the importance of providing students with first hand experiences with phenomena. Some teachers might recognize this hands-on exploration as the first stages of inquiry. But what were the students actually learning? What were they supposed to take away from all this activity?
Following each activity, the students engaged in whole-group sharing sessions and individual journal-writing sessions that were designed to help students see the patterns that emerged from their explorations. By the end of the unit, these students were able to describe the patterns that sounds are vibrations and that one thing vibrating can make another thing vibrate, even if they are not touching. The students experienced many examples of these phenomena. They were able to use the patterns to explain that when a classmate blew into a trumpet, the trumpet made vibrations that in turn vibrated your ear drum. They could explain how someone talking into a “telephone” made of plastic cups and fishing line could make the cup and the fishing line vibrate and so that the cup on the other end of the line vibrated as well. The students could go on to explain that the vibrating cup made the eardrum vibrate in such a way that the person on the receiving end could understand what the person on the sending end of the telephone was saying. In each of these examples, the students were confident in their explanations because they understood the patterns which supported the explanations they were using.
Scientists’ Science
Finding patterns in experiences is an important scientific practice (Anderson, 2003)1. Scientists are engaged in a collaborative enterprise to explain how our world works. To do this, scientists take the many seemingly unconnected phenomena and experiences that we encounter in our lives, find the patterns in all
1 This article summarizes ideas about scientists’ science, school science, and EPE triangles/charts developed by Charles W. Anderson at Michigan State University.
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of these millions of experiences, and develop explanations (called theories) for those patterns. Powerful theories can explain many patterns. In all of science, there are only a small number of powerful explanations and these explanations can account for many patterns drawn from millions of experiences. For example, in Earth science, plate tectonics is a powerful theory. This one theory can explain many patterns, including the formation and location of mountain belts, volcanoes, and earthquakes; the distribution of similar fossil assemblages and glacial deposits on multiple continents; and the age and magnetic orientation patterns of rocks on the sea floor. Each of these patterns, in turn, is supported by millions of individual observations made by many geologists over many years of scientific work. Table 1 shows the experiences, patterns, and explanations for the major science subject areas. Table 1: Experiences, Patterns, Explanations of Scientists’ Science (From Anderson, 2003).
The Experiences-Patterns-Explanations triangle (figure 1) represents scientists’ view of science (Anderson, 2003). The millions of observations and data points form the base of the triangle, the patterns (including laws and generalizations) derived from these experiences form the middle of the triangle, and the few theories that can account for all of these patterns and experiences form the apex of the triangle.
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Figure 1: EPE Triangle for Scientists’ Science (From Anderson, 2003).
Scientists’ science includes two important scientific practices: inquiry and application (Anderson, 2003). On the left side of the triangle, we can describe inquiry as learning from experience. Scientists find patterns in millions of experiences, then develop a few explanations to account for those patterns. In geology, the process of developing the theory of plate tectonics took over a hundred years as scientists’ pieced together bits of data and observations and slowly began to recognize patterns in their data, such as the apparent fit of the continents and the peculiar symmetrical pattern of magnetic sea floor stripes. Then, using creativity and ingenuity, they proposed explanations for these patterns. It wasn’t a linear process, as the geologists returned to the data to test their ideas and see which ideas held up. The explanations did not emerge from the data. While patterns may emerge, the explanations required testing and re-testing of hypotheses. However, the overall inquiry process can be characterized as learning from experiences.
Engaging in inquiry is not the only thing that scientists do. They also apply the explanations that they develop to understand new phenomena or experiences. For example, the power of plate tectonics is that is can be used to explain many additional experiences. When an earthquake happens in Pakistan or Los Angeles, scientists no longer wonder why the earthquakes happened. They can use the theory of plate tectonics to find the faults that moved and relate those fault movements to overall plate motions. This top down process is called application. Often, the process of application leads to the collection of more observations, which may lead to new questions and the recognition of new patterns. Thus, in scientists’ science, inquiry and application work together. Student Learning Scientists are not the only people engaged in inquiry and application. From our earliest explorations of the world, we are constantly looking for patterns in our experiences then developing and testing explanations for those patterns (Bransford & Donovan, 2005). Consider the toddler who is set down on her birthday and told to cover her eyes. When she opens her eyes, she sees a present set before her. Excitedly, she covers her eyes again. She is looking for a pattern in her
Dozens of patterns in experience
A few explanations
Millions of experiences
Inquiry: Learning from Experience
Application: Using Knowledge
in the material world
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experiences, and testing the idea that when she hides her eyes, a new present will appear. From childhood through adulthood, like scientists, we are trying to bring order to our experiences, and then use what we learn to explain new situations. The inquiry and application practices of scientists’ science are really just a rigorous use of people’s everyday exploration of the world. Traditional School Science Contrast scientists’ science (and our natural learning explorations) with school science. School science simplifies scientists’ science because students do not have the background experiences necessary to engage in the complex conversations about data in which scientists engage. However, in trying to simplify scientists’ science, school science tends to reduce scientists’ science to learning the explanations without developing the patterns and experiences that support the explanations. Traditional school science focuses on providing students with many facts, diagrams, definitions, and isolated skills. Table 2 shows the typical facts, definitions, diagrams, and skills associated with school science (Anderson, 2003). Table 2: Traditional School Science (From Anderson, 2003).
The EPE triangle for school science looks reversed from the scientists’ science triangle (figure 2). There are many explanations to learn, some laws and generalizations (patterns) to memorize, but few experiences provided to help students understand the basis for the explanations and laws. Furthermore, there is no place on the triangle for inquiry or application practices. With few experiences available, students are unable to recognize patterns, and are left with isolated facts that seem to account for nothing in particular. They do not learn from experiences (inquiry), and they do not apply explanations (application) (Anderson, 2003).
By concentrating on explanations, students only learn the story of science. Learning to tell the story of science is not necessarily bad. We want students to be able to explain the big ideas of science. However, stories alone do not help students make sense of the world. Our goal is to provide students with the sense-making tools that scientists’ science provides, and provide them with opportunities to engage in the inquiry (learning from experiences) and application (using knowledge) practices that characterize scientists’ science(Anderson, 2003).
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A few specific examples
Fewer patterns (laws, generalizations, graphs, charts)
Extensive explanations, models, theories
Figure 2: School Science (From Anderson, 2003). The Missing Patterns Returning to the second grade students exploring sound, we recognize their explorations with tuning forks, cups of water, popcorn, drums, and rice as gaining experiences. However, the students in this classroom where moving beyond discovery science. The explanations they were using for how we hear sounds were not explanations they invented or discovered on their own. They were also not explanations that they had memorized for a test. What distinguished the learning that took place in this classroom was the purposeful attention that the teacher paid to helping her students recognize the patterns in their experiences. The activities were carefully chosen to illustrate the patterns. For example, students first explored whistles and drums and noticed that something moved when each instrument made a sound. They used the rice drums to more carefully describe these movements and labeled these movements as vibrations. One student noted that “vibrations feel like worms moving inside your body.” The teacher then engaged students in the tuning forks exploration to help them see that when one thing vibrates, it can make another thing vibrate. After each set of experiences, the teacher and students discussed their experiences, with the teacher carefully leading the students to the patterns. If students did not arrive at the patterns as a group, the teacher stepped in to make the patterns clear. Students had to understand what the patterns were before they could use the patterns to understand explanations. Recognizing patterns is key to engaging successfully in the practices of both inquiry and application. Yet, both the elements of inquiry listed in the National Science Education Standards Inquiry book and the Five E instructional model do not emphasize the importance of patterns or make pattern finding explicit. To help students understand and be able to use scientific explanations, we must make pattern finding a focus of inquiry science learning.
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Using EPE Tables for Planning Figuring out the patterns that students need to recognize is probably the
most challenging part of using the EPE triangle to think about restructuring school science. One reason patterns may be hidden to students is that they are also hidden to teachers. Attending to patterns does require careful planning. As Table 2 shows, school science learning goals are often neither patterns nor explanations, but merely definitions or facts that may be part of some larger pattern or explanation. The first step is to consider the learning goals and decide if they are definitions and fact, or possibly patterns, or larger explanations. If the learning goals are facts, is there a way to organize the facts so that they illustrate patterns or support explanations?
Making Experiences-Patterns-Explanations charts for teaching may help teachers organize their learning goals and unpack the hidden patterns to which they are connected. EPE tables for teaching may look slightly different from EPE tables for scientists’ science (such as those in Table 1). Especially at the elementary level, the school science learning goals are more similar to patterns and not necessarily scientific explanations. For example, the classification of animals and rocks, or the description of motions, phase changes, or life cycles are all really patterns that support powerful explanations that students learn in middle and high school (i.e. natural selection, plate tectonics, particulate nature of matter). Tables 3-5 are examples of EPE tables for common elementary learning goals. The experiences listed are experiences students could have in the classroom, the patterns listed are patterns that students should be able to understand from these experiences, and the explanations are desired answers to specific questions related to the learning goal rather than powerful scientists’ science explanations. In high school, EPE tables for teaching begin to look more like scientists’ science EPE tables like those shown in table 1.
Table 3: How do we hear sounds? (2nd grade) Experiences Patterns Explanations x Blowing whistles x Observing drums x Making rice drums x Exploring tuning forks
(one tuning fork & two tuning forks)
x Exploring cup phones
x Things that vibrate make sounds
x One thing vibrating can make another thing vibrate
Example: When a drumstick hits a drum, the drum vibrates. The vibration makes our eardrums vibrate and that vibration sends a message to our brains that a drum is making a sound.
Inquiry Application
Table 4: How do animals survive in their environments? (5th grade) Experiences Patterns Explanations x Playing a game of hide
and seek with colored pieces of paper. The team with the most
x Camouflage coloring helps hide prey animals from predators or helps predators
Animals have physical or behavioral adaptations that help them survive in their environments.
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pieces not found at the end of the game “survives”.
x Observing and describing examples of animal teeth, bones, and fur.
x Using the internet to map animal migrations (i.e. caribou, monarch butterflies, salmon).
catch prey. x Tooth-type matches
the type of food animals eat.
x Some animals migrate to get to new food sources or breeding grounds.
Inquiry Application
Table 5: How can I tell what kind of rock this is? (3rd grade) Experiences Patterns Explanations x Sort a variety of rocks,
looking for similarities. x Look for fossils in a
variety of rocks. x Look at rocks in
categories based on where they were formed. Look for similarities in rocks that formed in volcanoes, on the beach, or in the mountains.
x Make igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic “rocks” from shavings from crayons. Compare the features of the crayon rocks to real rocks.
x Igneous rocks sometimes have interlocking crystals you can see or gas bubbles. They tell you the rock was once melted.
x Sedimentary rocks have grains glued together in layers and sometimes have fossils. They tell you the rock formed on the surface of the Earth.
x Metamorphic rocks also have interlocking crystals you can see, but they are often banded in layers that are squished together or folded. They tell you the rock was heated and squeezed.
Rocks have characteristics that can be used as clues to tell how the rock was formed.
Inquiry Application
Final Thoughts EPE tables are helpful for thinking about how to modify the school curriculum to make it more like scientists’ science. However, they do not provide guidance in how to organize the experiences into instructional sequences that make the patterns explicit. Instructional models, such as the 5Es model or the Inquiry-
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Application Instructional Model (I-AIM) can provide structures to follow in organizing sequences of activities to engage students in inquiry and application. A follow-up article will explain how to use the I-AIM instructional model to sequence activities into a unit plan that make school science look more like scientists’ science. References Anderson, C. W. (2003). Teaching science for motivation and understanding.
Unpublished manuscript, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. Bransford, J. D., & Donovan, S. M. (2005). Scientific inquiry and how people learn.
In S. Donovan, M. & J. D. Bransford (Eds.), How students learn: Science in the classroom (pp. 397-419). Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
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