Joel J. Mintzes

Cognitive structure and the affective domain: on knowing and feeling in biology

This cross-age study explored the structural complexity and propositional validity of knowledge about and attitudes toward sharks, and the relationships among knowledge and attitudes. Responses were elicited from a convenience sample of students (5th, 8th and 11th grade, and college level) and senior citizens (n = 238). All subjects constructed a concept map on sharks and responded to a Likert-type attitude inventory. Based on the work of Novak and Gowin ( Leaning How to Learn, Cambridge University Press, 1984), concept maps were scored for frequencies of non-redundant concepts and scientifically valid relationships, levels of hierarchy, incidence of branching and number of crosslinks. The attitude inventory, emerging from Kellerts ( The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and Human Society, Island Press, 1996) work, generated subscale scores on four affective dimensions: scientific, naturalistic, moralistic and utilitarian/negative. Significant differences were found among subject groups on all knowledge structure variables and attitudinal dimensions. Gender differences were documented on three of four attitude subscales. A series of simple, mulitiple and canonical correlations revealed moderately strong relationships between knowledge structure variables and attitudinal dimensions. The pattern of these relationships supports conservation education efforts and instructional practices that encourage meaningful learning, knowledge restructuring and conceptual change (Mintzes et al., Assessing Science Understanding: A Human Constructivist View, Academic Press, 2000).

Assessing understanding in biology

This paper discusses several new assessment strategies that encourage meaningful learning and conceptual understanding in the biological sciences. Our purpose is to introduce a handful of evaluation and measurement techniques that help students assimilate well-integrated, strongly cohesive frameworks of interrelated concepts as a way of facilitating ‘real understanding’ of natural phenomena. Among these methods are concept maps, V diagrams, SemNet software, image-based test items, clinical interviews, portfolios, written products, performance measures, and conceptual diagnostic tests. Evidence suggests that these methods are most useful at highlighting ‘alternative conceptions’ and assisting students who wish to ‘learn how to learn’.

Reform and Innovation in Science Teaching: A Human Constructivist View

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the origins of a human constructivist model of science teaching that can serve as an alternative to the hunches, guesses, and folklore that have guided the teaching profession for over 100 years. The final report of the Committee of Ten is one of the most remarkable documents in the history of American education. It represents for the first time that university-based scientists contributed substantially to the emerging debate on what schools teach and how they teach it. Recognizing that conceptual change often involves the extremely time-consuming process of negotiation has significant implications for curriculum and instruction. For one thing, it means that fewer topics can be covered in the course of a typical school year, and that great care needs to be taken in selecting and sequencing the concepts in a science curriculum. Increasingly, talented science teachers are being asked to take an active part in the selection of curricula, textbooks, and instructional materials. Rather than passive recipients of district-mandated curriculum guides and teacher-proof kits, these teachers are playing a central role in important decisions about curriculum and instruction.

Assessing science understanding

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the epistemological vee diagram that can be used to assess the extent to which students are capable of gaining knowledge and value claims in the natural sciences. The V diagrams represent a substantial range of ability and interest levels. It is important to keep in mind that each diagram is a unique and idiosyncratic representation of the learners understanding of the knowledge-making process. The focus question is the beginning point of any scientific investigation and typically addresses issues of what, when, how, or why. Choosing this question is almost certainly the most important decision a scientist makes and reveals much about his/her values and philosophy or worldviews. It is important for students to understand that science is limited in its reach to those things that humans can sense either directly or indirectly. Concepts are perceived regularities in objects or events that are designated by a sign or symbol. The signs and symbols that make up a language enable a person to communicate these regularities rapidly and succinctly.

Taiwanese Students’ Alternative Conceptions of Animal Biodiversity

This study explored and documented Taiwanese students’ alternative conceptions of animal classification. We examined the understanding of the animal, vertebrate and invertebrate, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal concepts among elementary, junior high school and senior high school, and university students in a sample population of close to 2,000 students. Using clinical interviews, sorting tasks, and a two‐tiered diagnostic instrument, we documented the frequencies of a wide range of ideas and compared our findings with those of studies in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States. The most important results indicate that for most students, the concept label animal refers to vertebrates, especially to common, well‐known mammals and birds; the most common attributes used by students to define animals are movement and viability; many students had difficulty in making the distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates, and between reptiles and amphibians; and students tended to use external morphology, habitat, and movement in distinguishing between common, well‐known vertebrates and invertebrates, and certain vertebrate animals pose special conceptual problems for students by virtue of their external morphology and habitat (e.g., the penguin and octopus). We contend that insights gained from this study will provide useful suggestions for Taiwanese science curriculum designers, science teachers, and researchers involved in the new 9‐year curriculum reform.

Research in Science Teaching and Learning: A Human Constructivist View

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the nature of research efforts in science education and how research can contribute to the improvement of classroom practice. The 20-year period following the launch of Sputnik saw remarkable change in research activities of science educators. The establishment of the first journal that was entirely devoted to research reports in the field and the rapid expansion of graduate programs producing M.S. and Ph.D. recipients with the research skills necessary to tackle significant problems in science teaching and learning were among the most important events in 1963. After reviewing the research reports of this era, one is struck by the extent to which empirical work was driven by the demands of curriculum reform and instructional innovation. These in turn reflected the national commitment to “catch up”with Soviet advances in the military, technological, and scientific arenas. In contrast to the assumptions of many science teachers, it is now clear that learners develop a set of well-defined ideas about natural objects and events even before they arrive at the classroom door.

Chapter 13 – Epilogue: Meaningful Learning, Knowledge Restructuring and Conceptual Change: On Ways of Teaching Science for Understanding

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a model designed to help teachers reflect on and evaluate new ways of teaching science for understanding. The model is based on a convergence of evidence from a number of closely related disciplines and draws heavily on the findings of cognitive scientists, applied learning theorists, and epistemologists as well as historians and philosophers of science. The model emerges directly from our human constructivist perspective and focuses attention on the critical relationships among meaningful learning, knowledge restructuring, and conceptual change. The challenge for teachers is finding ways to devise questions, experiments, and demonstrations that require students to rethink their ideas without unnecessarily emphasizing that their current ideas are wrong. By the time children begin the formal study of animal diversity, most of them have had a wide range of intense, personal, and often emotionally laden experiences with living organisms. Selecting intervention strategies and sequencing teaching episodes are among the most important decisions science teachers make.

Research in Science Teaching and Learning

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the nature of research efforts in science education and how research can contribute to the improvement of classroom practice. The 20-year period following the launch of Sputnik saw remarkable change in research activities of science educators. The establishment of the first journal that was entirely devoted to research reports in the field and the rapid expansion of graduate programs producing M.S. and Ph.D. recipients with the research skills necessary to tackle significant problems in science teaching and learning were among the most important events in 1963. After reviewing the research reports of this era, one is struck by the extent to which empirical work was driven by the demands of curriculum reform and instructional innovation. These in turn reflected the national commitment to “catch up”with Soviet advances in the military, technological, and scientific arenas. In contrast to the assumptions of many science teachers, it is now clear that learners develop a set of well-defined ideas about natural objects and events even before they arrive at the classroom door.

Reform and Innovation in Science Teaching

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the origins of a human constructivist model of science teaching that can serve as an alternative to the hunches, guesses, and folklore that have guided the teaching profession for over 100 years. The final report of the Committee of Ten is one of the most remarkable documents in the history of American education. It represents for the first time that university-based scientists contributed substantially to the emerging debate on what schools teach and how they teach it. Recognizing that conceptual change often involves the extremely time-consuming process of negotiation has significant implications for curriculum and instruction. For one thing, it means that fewer topics can be covered in the course of a typical school year, and that great care needs to be taken in selecting and sequencing the concepts in a science curriculum. Increasingly, talented science teachers are being asked to take an active part in the selection of curricula, textbooks, and instructional materials. Rather than passive recipients of district-mandated curriculum guides and teacher-proof kits, these teachers are playing a central role in important decisions about curriculum and instruction.

Chapter 3 – Research in Science Teaching and Learning: A Human Constructivist View

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the nature of research efforts in science education and how research can contribute to the improvement of classroom practice. The 20-year period following the launch of Sputnik saw remarkable change in research activities of science educators. The establishment of the first journal that was entirely devoted to research reports in the field and the rapid expansion of graduate programs producing M.S. and Ph.D. recipients with the research skills necessary to tackle significant problems in science teaching and learning were among the most important events in 1963. After reviewing the research reports of this era, one is struck by the extent to which empirical work was driven by the demands of curriculum reform and instructional innovation. These in turn reflected the national commitment to “catch up”with Soviet advances in the military, technological, and scientific arenas. In contrast to the assumptions of many science teachers, it is now clear that learners develop a set of well-defined ideas about natural objects and events even before they arrive at the classroom door.