Zeker weten? Leren de kwaliteit van biologie-onderzoek te bewaken in 5 vwo

Abstract

In Dutch pre-university biology education, students often conduct their own research with enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm does not guarantee quality. To ensure the quality of scientific research one needs to understand the empirical argumentation which plays a role in every phase of research. In two research cycles two teaching and learning strategies have been designed and implemented to see whether they are good enough for learning to ensure quality. The developmental research has taken place in two schools, in 11th grade classes of two reasonably experienced teachers. The core content of the strategies is a selection out of 23 concepts of evidence for biology research. A dilemma in the didactical practice of conducting research in school is whether reflection upon its quality should take place in and as a consequence of (problems within) one’s own research, or by taking a step aside and instead posing an other problem and applying it to one’s own research. Both approaches have been used in this research. In the explicit teaching and learning strategy reflection is stimulated by giving reflection tasks to students, for which they have to interrupt their own research: reflection-on-action. In the implicit teaching and learning strategy criteria are only raised – either by the teacher or by the students – when it is demanded by the quality of the research: reflection-in-action. Starting from Galperins model of spiral formation of mental actions, utterances of teacher and students with respect to the concepts of evidence are categorised as problematizing, describing, explaining, generalizing and applying. The role of the teacher appeared crucial, the explaining and generalising particularly took place in conversations between teacher and students. In their mutual conversations the students mainly rested on the concrete level of describing and problematizing their research. The conversations about the reflection tasks appeared to be better occasions for making the concepts both explicit and general than the conversations about their own research. According to the research in this thesis, the characteristics of a feasible and effective strategy for teaching and learning to ensure the quality of research in pre-university biology education are: - clarity about what it means to ensure the quality of research, for teachers as well as for students; - a sound imbedding of conducting research in the scientific story about doing research, not merely as icing on the cake, but as yeast in the dough; - forming to the interaction between doing research and learning about doing research by way of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action; - an interest to get an answer as certain as possible in order for students to feel a sense of ownership to the research they are engaged in. - sufficient expertise on the part of the teacher in doing and coaching research as well as ensuring the research quality. Furthermore, learning to ensure the quality of research seems to need more than one research project and more than school as a context. It seems to be necessary to find more motives and more opportunities to put the spiral of describing, explaining and generalizing into motion. Possibilities to encourage that are discussed.