The Performance and Improvement Strategies of Scientific Explanatory Ability in Real Problem Situations
Guiding students to construct scientific explanations is an important goal of science education.Based on the NOSE framework,this study explores the performance of students'abilities of providing scientific explanations for realistic physics problems with or without structural scaffolds.The results show that:Subjects mostly use the explanatory elements of causal chains,inferences,general law-like statements,knowledge,necessary conditions,and big ideas;The relative frequency of knowledge and general law-like statements is significantly higher for the teacher group than for the student group,while the relative frequency of causal chains and inferences is significantly lower than for the student group;Five types of explanation appear in the current study,i.e.Causal-Mechanical and Deductive-Nomological explanation,Causal explanation,Deductive-Nomological explanation,Causal-Mechanical explanation,and Causal Deductive-Nomological explanation.Structural scaffoldings effectively improve the quality of students'scientific explanations.The current study extended our understanding and measuring of scientific explanation,as well as a strategy for improving the ability of students'scientific explanations.