Exploring Scientific Norms and Students’ Evaluative Language Use in Swedish National Test in Chemistry

Author(s):

Marie Ståhl(presenting / submitting)Jenny W. Folkeryd

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 12 B, Peer Assesment in Writing, Evaluative Language in Science Tests and Critical Norms in Sex Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-26

09:00-10:30

Room:

NM-F103

Chair:

Carol Taylor

Contribution

General description

Interest in natural science is low and decreasing among 15-year-olds in the world’s richest countries. This trend is particularly pronounced in the Nordic countries (Sjøberg & Schreiner 2010). Many researchers believe that this weak interest is based on the image of science subjects and scientists that has been created and continuously reproduced – an image that many young people do not identify with. Science subjects are seen as difficult and as the domain of an elite group (Lemke 2010; Archer et al. 2010). According to others, this lack of interest is a consequence of the norms and values, ”companion meanings” that are constructed in and around all aspects of the science education discourse (Roberts & Östman 1998).

Nancy Brickhouse and Julie Kittleson (2006) argue that students’ lack of interest and involvement in natural science is a matter of democracy. If the vast majority of young people take no interest in science, then an elite group will be allowed to make all the decisions concerning, e.g., social and ecological justice (Ibid 2006).

Brickhouse believes that if we are to create a form of science education for everyone, we need science teaching that builds on knowledge of (…) how students engage in science and how this is related to who they are and who they want to be (Brickhouse 2001 p. 286). From a broader perspective, this entails saying ’yes’ to an embodied science teaching (Brickhouse 2001).

The present study has investigated one way through which students’ engagement is expressed in the science teaching, namely through using evaluative language resources. Students’ responses (n=198) to an item on the 2009 Swedish national examination in chemistry for 15-year-olds were studied.

The item:

Explain how the discovery of refining crude oil has had an impact on how we live and how we perceive the world around us.
Choose another discovery in chemistry. Describe how this discovery has changed humans’ ways of thinking and doing things.

The overall aim has been to investigate the didactic value of allowing students to work with a task that gives them the opportunity to, in part, choose the problem area, express their own viewpoints and take their own moral and ethical stands. This entails gaining insight into what engages students and how, and ultimately – from a classroom perspective and as teachers – becoming aware of the linguistic features students make use of to express their involvement. Based on the above aims, the following specific questions have been relevant to study.

How and to what extent is evaluative language resources used in the students’ texts?
What content are foregrounded using these evaluative language resources?
How is this content related to the norms and values found in the specific test item under study and in the national examination as a whole?

The present theoretical framework consists of two critical strands of research that take norm-critical perspectives and focus on the content of teaching, i.e., its goals, purposes and traditions. This means that the theoretical frames of interpretation consist of critical didactics/critical curriculum theory (Klafki 1997; Englund 1997; Roberts & Östman 1998) and the feminist theories of science (Sandra Harding 1986; Donna Haraway 1988, 1991), science teaching and learning (Nancy Brickhouse 2001). Thus, the present results will be discussed and interpreted using these theoretical frames to understand and gain perspective on some of the factors affecting students’ views on natural science, how they choose to act in relation to the studied item, as well as what teaching should be based on in order to engage students.

Method

Method The study investigates how students use language as a cultural and mental tool, or artifact, in a particular practice (Vygotsky 2009/1934) which means that students’ standpoints or attitudes as expressed through evaluative language resources are being investigated. Thereby the study takes a strong linguistic perspective that is anchored in various sociocultural theories. The study is based on the notion that language is a social-semiotic system, through which meaning is expressed (Lemke 1990). To analyze the students’ evaluative expressions, we have used the semantic framework Appraisal. The Appraisal system was developed within systemic functional linguistics to describe how text, through the use of evaluative language resources, meets and creates relations with a reader (Folkeryd 2006). Thus, the aim of an appraisal analysis is to focus on …the subjective presence of writers/speakers in texts as they adopt stances towards both the material they present and those with whom they communicate (Martin & White 2005 p.1). Focus is in this study on utterance classified as attitude and graduation. Attitude expresses a negative or positive evaluation of a person, thing, situation or state, either explicitly or implicitly. Evaluative expressions can also be reinforced or weakened using different kinds of graduation. For example, the evaluative volume can be turned up, as in Asphalt… has helped our infrastructure develop enormously or turned down, as in It’s made us a bit lazy . Through a manual analysis of all evaluative expressions used in a text, a picture emerges of the text’s evaluative textual volume, that is, the writer’s degree of involvement. A text containing a lot of evaluative language resources including graded expressions generally has a high evaluative textual volume and expresses the writer’s extensive involvement. In such cases, the implicit expressions strengthen the attitude that has been expressed explicitly. Texts containing few or no attitudes and/or graduations have low evaluative textual volume. Medium-high evaluative textual volume is found in texts that may well have many attitudes and graduations, but that have little or no variation between them, i.e. only one type of attitude and limited use of graduation. In addition to analyzing the students’ responses through evaluative language resources, we have also analyzed what content is foregrounded using these evaluative resources as well as analyzing this in relation to the norms and values that were found in the studied test item and the national test of 2009 as a whole (author 2015 submitted).

Expected Outcomes

Results The present results show that students do not adhere to the norms that the 2009 test has stated which says that science should be objective and rational, and thereby non-evaluative, non-emotional, non-esthetical and almost impeccable (author 2015 submitted). They act quite contrary to this message. They Kick back (Haraway 1991), which signifies that a vast majority of students make positive and negative evaluative statements when discussing the consequences the oil industry’s production and products as well as other discoveries in chemistry have had for society, nature and how we think and act. Moreover, they reinforce their statements by turning on the grading (Martin & White 2005). Through these linguistic features, the students show their emotional involvement in the issues they choose to discuss, that are primarily environmental and health issues, as well as issues concerning armed conflicts. This can be said to resemble what Haraway (1998) claims she is doing, that is, arguing from a bodily perspective or what Brickhouse (2001) expresses as an embodied science teaching. These results point at the very importance of letting students use their emotions and not in a Cartesian way separate the body from the mind. We cannot experience and interact with the world without the whole of our body (Alsop 2011). From a didactic point of view this entails teachers acquiring knowledge about what their teaching should be based on if it is to engage students. Furthermore, the results also show that open-ended items as the one in this study give students opportunity to develop ability to draw conclusions, to generalize and to explain and justify their thinking when discussing different topics of their choice. Almost all students do this and this is most visible among those that have the largest amount of evaluations and graduations.

References

References Archer, L., Dewitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., & Wong, B. (2010). “Doing” science versus “being” a scientist: examining 10/11-year-old school children's constructions of science through the lens of identity. Science Education, 94, 617–639. doi: 10.1002/sce.20399 Brickhouse, N. (2001). Embodying science: a feminist perspective on learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38, 282-295. doi: 10.1002/1098-2736(200103)38:3<282::AID-TEA1006>3.0.CO;2-0 Brickhouse, N. & Kittleson, J. (2006). Visions of curriculum, community, and science. Educational Theory, 56 (2), 191-204. doi:10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00011.x Englund, T. (1998). Teaching as an offer of (discursive) meaning. In B. Gundem, & S. Hopmann (Eds), Didaktik and/or curriculum: an international dialogue (pp. 215-226). New York: P. Lang, cop. Folkeryd, J.W. (2006). Writing with an Attitude: Appraisal and student texts in the school subject of Swedish. PhD thesis, Uppsala University, Department of Linguistics and Philology. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14, 575-599. Haraway, D. (1991). Siamans, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Klafki, W. (1997). Kritisk- konstruktiv didaktik. In M. Uljens, (Ed.) Didaktik: teori, reflektion och praktik, (pp. 215-228). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Lemke, J. (1990). Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, cop. Martin, J. R. & White, P. R. R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillian. Miller, P. (2006). Contemporary perspectives from human development: implications for feminist scholarship. Signs, 31(2), 445-469. doi: 10.1086/491680 Milne, C. & Rubin, K. (2011). Embodying emotions: making transactions explicit in science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education. 6, 625-633. doi: 10.1007/s11422-011-93554-2 Orlander, A. A. & Wickman, P-O. (2011). Bodily experiences in secondary school biology. Cultural studies of science education, 6, 569-594. doi: 10.1007/s11422-010-9191-4 Roberts, D. (1998). Analyzing school science courses: the concept of companion meaning. In D. Roberts, & L. Östman (Eds.), Problems of meaning in science curriculum (pp. 5-12). New York: Teachers College Press. Vygotsky, L. (1934/2009). Tänkande och språk. [Thought and language]. Göteborg: Daidalos. Östman, L.(1995). Socialisation och mening: NO-utbildning som politiskt och miljömoraliskt problem. PhD thesis. Uppsala University: Department of education. Östman, L.(1998). How companion meanings are expressed by science education discourse. In D. Roberts, & L. Östman (Eds.), Problems of meaning in science curriculum (pp.54-70). New York: Teachers College Press.

Author Information

Marie Ståhl (presenting / submitting)

Uppsala University

Center for Gender Research

Uppsala

Jenny W. Folkeryd

Uppsala University

Department of Education