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Saturday, December 22, 2012

Assessing Scientific Ideas (Assessment and Educational Evaluasion)

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION


1.1 Background of Study
Science is a major area of human mental and practical activity which generates knowledge, knowledge that can be the basis of important technological applications as well as of intellectual satisfaction (Harlen, 1992: 2). Science provides any activities that require students and all people to understand about its nature. The nature of science is going to reach if people are able to understanding the characteristics of science and its components specifically, whether convey understanding its natural phenomenon or developing ideas which fit to the available evidences.
Developing ideas of science is very difficult for students. Students tend to use their common sense whenever they have found the phenomenon of natural science. They are rarely to evaluate the phenomenon using scientific concept. In the learning process, students go through the same processes in trying to make sense of object or events, but because of their more limited experience they may not have an idea available to them which really fits and they use what seem most reasonable to them (Harlen, 1985: 20 adapted from Harlen, 1992: 11). For example, face with the evidence that a boy exerts a constant horizontal force on a large box. As a result, a block moves across a horizontal floor at a constant speed “v0”. The constant horizontal force applied by the boy is? (Adapted from Christian, 2010). The concept of force can be applied in this illustration. But, it seems to be very large problem for students. In other hand, almost students will tend to reason that the constant horizontal force applied by the boy is greater than the total force which resists the motion of the box.
That example illustrates several points which are generally found in learning and which are represented the learning process not successfully. Therefore, it needs to be maintained such as major objective how develop the scientific idea of students. As a part of learning, this makes a requirement for teachers in other assess student’s scientific ideas. It is very useful either teachers or students. Teachers can put down a scientific concept to student, i.e., both implicitly and explicitly science confinement as objective, capable of yielding ultimate truths, proving things, having a definition and unique subject matter, having unique method, and being value-free (Harlen, 1992: 2). By engaging student’s knowledge, teachers are able to decide what kind of student’s idea will be assessed regarding to the science confinement, how the ideas can be assesses. It is more specific, because teachers should understand first what scientific idea is.
  Shortly, assessing student’s scientific idea is required teacher to give more attention to the science confinement. In other side, teachers have to understand about student’s concept mapping, student’s common sense, and the characteristic of student’s prior knowledge, in other teachers are able to decide the method for use in assessing student’s scientific ideas. Deeply, these matters are important to be discussed. Therefore, more systematic it will be analyzed deeply about assessing student’s scientific ideas.

1.2 The Statement of Study
There are any points which need to be discussing deeply in this occasion, such follows:
1.    What is scientific idea?
2.    How to gained student’s scientific ideas in learning science?
3.    How the scientific ideas can be assessed in learning process?

1.3 The Purpose of Study
Specifically, the purpose of this study is to understand about student’s scientific idea and how to provide an available method to assess the scientific ideas. It is the important aspect for teachers that should be maintained. Besides that, this study is purposed to form the science literacy which combined to the dealing of assessment.














CHAPTER II
ANALYSIS AND IMPLICATION


2.1 Analysis
2.1.1 What is Scientific Idea?
The question “what is scientific idea” seems the most obvious and yet the most unnecessary question with which to begin. It is obvious that we should want to be clear about what it is we are assessing.  It is important for teacher to understand about the student’s idea. The some of student’s ideas are different from those of scientists has been known for a long time.
Based on the theory of constructivism, students are able to construct their knowledge by their self, not caused by transfer of knowledge from teacher to their mind. Therefore, as the impact of this theory, students have chance to explore their experience to the object of study. It means that they have prior knowledge that possible different to the scientific. The idea which is constructing in learning might be different to the scientist’s idea.
So the tenets of constructivist learning clearly now have widespread support, although it is necessary to look more closely at what taking the student’s idea seriously means. The extent to which  student’s idea are used, rather than merely revealed and noted, makes all the difference to whether or not the students have the intended ownership as their ideas are modified and be adapted to the scientific idea. 
Student’s idea can be directed to the scientific idea by considered the two important points to make about conditions under which ideas will become more scientific during the process of change embodied in learning process. First, when idea is tested, the outcome in terms of changed or rejected ideas will depend on the way in which the testing is carried out. It was assumed in the argument that testing of ideas was rigorous and systematic, in the way associated with scientific investigation (Harlen, 1992: 13). When this is so, then ideas which do not fit to the evidence will be rejected and those which do fit will be accepted and strengthened. But it may not be case that the testing of student’s idea has this quality. Students may ignore contradictory evidence in interpreting findings and hold on to their initial ideas even when these do not fit the evidence. That extent to which student’s idea become more scientific depends on the way in which the linking and testing are carried out, that is, on the use of the process skill.
The second point is that the students having less experience have fewer existing concepts to use in attempting to explain new phenomenon. It seems characteristic of human being to try to explain things and that if really fit are not available then less satisfactory ideas will be used. It is more comfortable to modify an idea to abandon it, especially if it is your only way of making any sense of observation. It often happens that student will hold onto their idea to the point where their modification in other to explain way contrary evidence renders them unscientific.
In the interest of protecting the validity of hypothetical scientific ideas, it might be best, in these circumstances to agree the possibility of supporting evidence but to suggest that what had been seen so far did not seem to support the ideas (Harlen, 1992: 14).

2.1.2 Teacher’s Role in Developing Student’s Scientific Ideas
The development of ideas and understanding goes hand to hand with the development of process skill and scientific attitudes. Learning with understanding involves development of ideas through the learners own thinking and action and in science this means that process skill are used and through use are developed to deal with new situations. Attitudes, being more generalized component of behavior and process skill and concepts, depend upon being  fostered in a wide range of experiment since there is no way of teaching attitude directly. This essential interconnectedness of ideas, or concepts, skills and attitudes is not denied by focusing on each one at a time in considering the teacher’s role in developing student’s scientific activity.
The teacher’s rule in helping students to develop ideas has several aspects, of which we shall consider the following (Harlen, 1992: 74-80):
1.    Gaining access to student’s ideas
Students have to be involved in relevant explorations or enquiries when their ideas are monitored. This is a variety of technique which can be used to enable student to reveal their ideas. But by the nature of the demand for immediate information, they can’t be used for all children at the same time.
2.    Deciding the next step
To decide the action to take in the light of evidence about the ideas children have, it is necessary to keep in mind the starting point and the general direction toward more widely applicable scientific ideas. For example, the existing ideas might be there is nothing in the empty space between objects around us, and the scientific idea might be air is all around us.
3.    Taking action to help the development
Responding the information about student’s idea can be drew together under three headings: (1) practical activities, (2) discussion, and (3) expectation and support. Practical activities designed to develop student’s ideas are mainly of two kinds, such as those which are intended to extend student’s experience and involve student in testing their idea. Discussion of words and other representation is not sufficient on its own but as an accompaniment to practical activity it can make all to the thinking which is provoked by experience. The last, expectation and support can be varied from one child to another so that each is enjoying the challenge of extending ideas but within the range of present capabilities.

2.1.3 Deciding the Ideas to Assess
When teachers plan activities and the sorts of experiences they will provide for children they have in mind certain ideas and skill which they intend the activities to foster. These are expressed in various ways and recently the identification of statements of attainment of the national curriculum has provided useful means of doing this. It is not expected that a single lesson, or activity spreading over several lessons, will result in the achievement of the skills and ideas but that the activity will make a contribution and this is seen as the educational reason for the activity will make a contribution and this is seen as the educational reason for the activity (Harlen, 1992: 174).
Forward planning of this kind is essential for purposeful teaching and it need not be in any way confining. The stated intention may be that children should raise questions or plan their own investigations or exchange ideas about a new phenomenon. These objectives allow all the freedom children need to retain ownership of their learning and provide a clear basis for a teacher to decide how to set up the lesson and how to interact with the children. It is this clarity which is to go gathered. What this means in practice is best conveyed through an example.
There were few other ideas which student would no doubt be helped to develop in the activities but the teacher decide to focus on these four rather than spread more widely. They include a range of conceptual difficulty. They span levels 2 to 4 in the national curriculum, which the teacher judge would match the level of development of student in the class with respect to this are of work.
The question then arises as to how information to be gathered about the student’s ideas. What method can be used during the course of the activities? It should be considered that the questions can be answered by interpreting the assessment of student’s ideas. By using the method need to be ones which enable information to be gathered from the entire student undertaking the activity.

2.1.4 Method for Use as Part of Teaching
Children have to construct their own meaning regardless of how clearly teachers or books tell them things. Mostly, a person does this by connecting new information and concepts to what he or she already believes. Concepts—the essential units of human thought—that do not have multiple links with how a student thinks about the world are not likely to be remembered or useful. Or, if they do remain in memory, they will be tucked away in a drawer labeled, say, "biology course, 1995," and will not be available to affect thoughts about any other aspect of the world. Concepts are learned best when they are encountered in a variety of contexts and expressed in a variety of ways, for that ensures that there are more opportunities for them to become imbedded in a student's knowledge system.
The main method fall under the four headings of discussion, including questioning and listening, children’s drawings, annotated by themselves or in discussion with the teacher, concept maps, which are a special form of drawing and children’s writing, which may be structured by the teacher in the form of questions to answer, or may be an account of observations an ideas structured by the child.

1. Discussion                                          
The teaching process usually begins with questions and phenomena that are interesting and familiar to students, not with abstractions or phenomena outside their range of perception, understanding, or knowledge. Students need to get acquainted with the things around them—including devices, organisms, materials, shapes, and numbers—and to observe them, collect them, handle them, describe them, become puzzled by them, ask questions about them, argue about them, and then to try to find answers to their questions.
Just listening in to the children’s observations will provide information about the way they are using the words hot, cold, melt, and perhaps temperature. For those children whose grasp of these is not clear some direct questioning will probe their ideas:
-  How does the water feel compared with the ice?
-  Touch your arm and then the ice, how does the ice feel in comparison?
-  (if the word temperature has been used) Which is at the highest temperature, your arm, the ice or the water?
-  What do you think it means when the temperature of something goes up?
More open question help to start discussion about why the ice melts, something which some children of this age will assume is ‘natural’ ad does not need explanation:
-  What do you think is causing the ice to melt?
-  What would you need to do to stop it melting?
-  What do you think is happening when you put water in a freezer and goes solid?
If such questions seem too demanding, remember that, first, they are not much different from the questions teachers ask when they join groups during the normal course of teaching, and second, they do not all need to be asked of all children. It will be evident in many cases that either a child is still some way from an idea or that they have already become at ease with it. This information will be used to lead the children to activities which advance their ideas from where they are, but there is no need to continue probing when is clear. A third point is that talking in not the only means of communicating ideas that children can use.

2. Children’s Drawings

Asking children to draw what they think is happening gives a permanent record of their ideas which has the advantage of being able to be perused after the event. It is not easy for anyone to draw abstract things such an ideas  about melting, and the use of labels and annotation as a commentary on what is happening is necessary, but the drawing is essential for conveying the image by a seven year old (figure) shows very clearly that the child considered the direct action of the sun as important in causing the disappearance (by evaporation) of water from the tank. In the case of the ice balloon, useful suggestions for probing (and advancing) children’s ideas might be:
-   Draw what the ice balloon looks like now and what you think it will look like after dinner, at the end of the afternoon and tomorrow if we leave it in water ( the same task could be given to predict what it would look like if left out the water)
-   Put labels on your drawings to point out the things which have changed and what changed them.
-   Draw a picture with labels to show all the differences you can between ice and water.
It is best, if at all possible, to talk to the children individually while they are doing their drawings and to clarify for your information things which are not easy to interpret.
3. Concept Maps
Concept maps are diagrammatic ways of representing links between concepts. There are certain rules to apply which are very simple and readily grasped by the children of five or six. If we take the words Solid and Liquid we can relate them to each other in this way (figure)
We have a proportion which indicates a relationship, with the arrow signifying the direction. Solids may melt into liquids, but not vice versa. We can add to this by linking other words and so forming a map.
Asking children to draw their ideas about how things are linked up provides insight into the way they envisage how one thing causes another. The starting point is to list words about the topic the children are working on and then ask them to draw arrows and to write ‘joining’ words on them. (figure 2) shows the list and the map which a six years old, drew after some activities about heat and its effect on various things. It is possible to spot from this that the children has not yet distinguished heat from temperature but that they have some useful ideas about what heat can do. As with all diagrams, it is advisable to discuss them with the child to be sure to the meaning intended.

4. Children’s Writing
Whilst drawings can usually be made by even the youngest children, writing is most helpful when children become at ease in doing it. However the following example was of a six year old who explains why the condensation from her breath on a cold window went away.
“ I went outside and I breathed on the windows and my cold breath comes out and if you look at it, you can see it large a way it goes when it gets warm”. (Russell and Watt, p. 36 adapted from Harlen, 1992: 180).
A ten year olds answer to how to slow down the evaporation of water from tank indicates the value of not just asking for writing about what has been observed but posing problems where ideas have to be used:
“by putting a piece of glass covering it and it will last longer because it can’t get out”(Russell and Watt, 1990. p. 38)
The kind of writing task which may reveal children’s ideas in the context of the ice balloon activity would be stimulated by:
-   What were the changes which happened to the ice balloon in the water? What would you need to stop the ice balloon changing?
-   Describe what you think would make the ice melt more quickly and say why it would work.
-   Describe to someone who had never seen ice and water what the differences are and how they would know which was which.
Many of the questions suggested earlier for discussion could also be turned into writing task for older children.

2.1.5 Using the Result
We will probably have been realized that what has been suggested for assessing could equally well have been suggested as teaching points, to close is the relationship between teaching and assessment of the behind being considered. Just to underline further that the purpose of lathering information in this way is to use it in teaching, we bring together here some ideas for acting upon the information about the children’s ideas (Harlen, 1992: 181).
1.    If the child is not using a word in a way consistent with a good grasp of the concept, discuss the child’s meaning of the word; try to find out how the misunderstanding has arisen.
2.    The same may apply to the whole task and so it is useful to find out what the child considers (s) he is doing (for example, if melting is understood as “breaking up” the child’s action could same quite in appropriate to the teacher  but rational to the child.
3.    Use other members of a group to help a child whose ideas seem less well developed. For example the child who didn’t see any reason to explain why water freezes in a freezer, was challenged by others to go further: but there must be something happening, it doesn’t happen by magic. He then listened to their ideas and began to add some suggestion of his own.
4.    The most effective way of helping children to develop their ideas is to help them to turn them into a form which can be tested. This involves making a prediction. The child who said that it was the water which was making the ice balloon melt revised this after realizing that on this basis taking it out of the water should stop it melting, which was soon found not to be true.

2.1.6 Method for Checking Up Student’s Ideas
One of the ways of obtaining information to summaries students’ achievement is by checking up, that is giving some special tasks which are devised specifically to assess the points reached in the development of ideas. There are also comes when teachers feel the need to introduce the special tasks when it does not seem to have been possible to collect information about certain ideas in any other way.
Based on the APU bank, the way can use to assessing student’s ideas thorough asking children to apply them rather that asking them directly for facts, which could be memorized. The open response is important so that student can use or explain their ideas and not just respond to alternative given by others. More information about how student responded to these questions and how they were marked can be found from the references given (Harlen, 1992: 181-182).

2.2 Implication
As the implication of assessing scientific ideas of student, it oppose teacher to orchestrate discourse among students about scientific ideas. An important stage of inquiry and the student science learning in oral and written discourse that focus the attention of student on how they know what they know and how their knowledge connect to larger ideas, other domains, and the world beyond the classroom. Teachers directly support and guide this discourse in two ways (adapted from National Research Council, 1998: 36): (1) they require students to record their work-teaching the necessary skill as appropriate-and (2) they promote many different forms of communication.
Using collaborative group structure, teacher encourages interdependency among group members, assisting students to work together in small groups so that all participate in sharing data and developing group report. Teacher also gives group opportunities to make presentation of their work and to engage with their classmates in explaining, clarifying, and justifying what they have learned.  The teacher’s role in these small and larger group interactions is to listen, encourage broad participation, and judge how to guide discussion-determining ideas to follow, ideas to question, information to provide, and connections to make. In the hand of skilled teacher, such group work leads students to recognize the expertise that different members of the group bring to each endeavor and the greater value of evidence and argument over personality and style.
Developing student’s scientific ideas takes time on a daily basis and over the long term. Schools must restructure schedules so that teachers can use blocks of time, interdisciplinary strategies, and field experiences to give student many opportunities to engage in serious scientific investigation as an integral part of their science learning. When considering how to structure available time, skilled teachers realize that students need time to try out ideas, to make mistakes, to ponder, and to discuss with one another.
Understanding the various ideas which have by student skilled teachers recognize the diversity in their classes and organize classroom so that all students have the opportunity to participate fully. Teacher’s monitory the participant of all students, carefully determining, for instance, if all members of a collaborative group are working with materials or if one student is making all the decisions. This monitoring can be particularly important in classes of diverse students, where social issues of status and authority can be factor.
Refer to the assessment of student’s scientific ideas, requires a range of actions based on careful assessments of students, knowledge of science, and a repertoire of science-teaching strategies. One aspect of the teachers is model for the students they teach. A teacher who engages in inquiry with student’s model the skills needed for inquiry. Teachers who exhibit enthusiasm and interest and who speak to the power and beauty of scientific understanding instill in their students some of those same attitudes toward sciences.
Based on the assessment of student’s scientific ideas, engage teacher has to be given the resources and authority to select the most appropriate materials and to make decisions about when, where, and how to make them accessible. Such decisions balance safety, proper use, and availability with the need for students to participate actively in designing experiments, selecting tools, and constructing apparatus, all of which are critical of to the development of an understanding of inquiry.
It is important for student to learn how to access scientific information from books, periodicals, videos, databases, electronic communication, and people with expert knowledge. Students are also taught to evaluate and interpret the information they haveacquired through those resources. Teacher provides the opportunities to students to use contemporary technology as they develop their scientific understanding.



           
           


CHAPTER III
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

3.1 Conclusions
Based on the analysis of the matter, it can be concluded such as follows:
1.    Scientific idea is an adea that can be implemented by using the  scientific method, such as experiement, observation, analysis, or making synthesis of the idea. This idea encourage by the scientific attitudes, such as objective, made from the curiosity, supported by evidences, has critical reflection, open mindedness, can be generated with other, and dominate of scientific creativity.
2.    It is need for teacher to assess student’s scientific ideas by using some methods of assessment, such as giving chance to students in other making observation, experiment, or analysis about the interest matter for them. Teacher can assess the relationship of student’s scientific ideas to the method and their performace to aplicate the ideas. As the result, teacher is able to use the result of assessment to be refference for student’s progression on learning science.
3.    It is important both teacher and students to maintein the development of their ideas to making the interest scientific ideas. Teacher can ask student to present their result of experiment and observation as the responsibility of their scentific attitude. In other hand, teacher is able to analysis student’s literacy of science regarding to the development of scientific ideas.

3.2 Suggestions
The most importance to consider for teacher in process of assessing student’s scientific ideas, in other they can maintein student’s knowledge, exactly their literacy on science. Perhaps, the student consideration of learning science influent their development of the ideas. Beside that, teacher be expected to facilitate students with resources, either the tools of experiement or some of valid books.






REFFERENCES

Christian, R. and Aufschnaiter, C. 2010. Misconceptions or missing conceptions? (Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education). Vol. 6: 3-18. Germany: Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen.
Harlen, W. 1992. The teaching of science. Great Britain: BPCC Ltd. Exeter.

National Research Council. 1998. National science education standard. Washington DC: National Academic Press.






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