In this study we report findings on how the development of taste for science among primary school students (Year 2, ages 7-8) can be supported by fine-tuned adjustments in teaching. The concept of taste for science was originally developed as a proxy for student interest, treating the aesthetic and normative aspects of science learning as intertwined and as constituted in action (author et al., 2015a). Distinctions of taste not only concern what the individual knows and feels about science, for example, what constitutes a beautiful observation chart in biology class or whether students consider themselves to be science persons or not, they are also open for others to evaluate and judge (author, 2006).

Taste in general (Bourdieu, 1984; Dewey, 1934/1980) and taste for science thus is socially constituted and learnt and strongly associated with home background (author et al., 2013). Students with an academic background have been shown to be more likely to enter school with a taste for science that will be recognized and therefore more likely to be further cultivated (ibid). It is also well established that some students feel alienated to science and claim that it is not for them, even if they perform well in science (e.g. Archer et al., 2010). Thus teaching has an important compensatory role in supporting students developing a taste for science as taught in school and ultimately making more students feel that they are included in, rather than excluded from, the practices of their science classes.

Regardless of home background, students' interest in and identification with science show a clear decline at the transition between primary and lower secondary school (Potvin & Hasni, 2014) and there is a call for studies exploring how continuity between different school stages can come about through teaching and so potentially establish a more enduring interest in science (Potvin & Hasni, 2014). This is also the aim of this study, namely, to explore the role of teaching for student learning and taste development in science. In previous studies at the lower secondary school level we have shown how teaching can support students in developing a taste, as evident by how they make and aesthetically evaluate distinctions regarding language use, procedures, and ways-to-be in the science classroom (author el al., 2015b). Here we are interested in the younger students, and we ask: How can teaching support primary school students’ taste for science?

The study is part of a larger project in which we, teachers and researchers, collaborate in developing teaching for supporting communicative processes in the science classroom. The aim of the project is to develop didactic models for classroom communication, making them useful for teaching primary science particularly for second-language learners with non-academic backgrounds. Author 3 and Author 5 are the teachers of the students participating in the project. The two schools are located in suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden, where the students mainly have non-academic backgrounds and are second-language learners.

Data was collected through an iterative process following the first two phases of didactic modelling (author, et al., 2018). In the first phase, extraction, we used didactic theory combined with the professional knowledge of the participating teachers to identify aspects of existing teaching that could be adjusted to increase student communication. In the next step, didactic models were used to plan teaching activities that could address the aspects identified. In the second phase, mangling, the adjustments were tested in a new lesson so providing an opportunity to evaluate the utility of the model used. In the third and final phase, exemplification, concrete examples that are conceptualized according to the model will be produced, thus providing teachers with examples on how the model can be used. The project is conducted in the context of the Swedish school development programme Naturvetenskap och Teknik för Alla (NTA)/Science and Technology for All. NTA provides teachers with a curriculum for conducting a series of inquiry lessons as parts of various science units. These NTA lessons with accompanying materials have been the context of the interventions. The data for the present study come from one of the schools where the participating students (year 2, ages 7-8) made a practical on categorization and one on fair testing. The students worked in groups of two or three, video-and audio data were collected and transcribed verbatim. The categorization lesson was the first lesson within the project and the teacher taught according to the teacher instructions of the NTA-material. The students were supposed to plan together how the characteristics of two different materials (a brass button and a blue colored sponge) could be examined and described (e.g., what form and color it had, whether it floated or not). The whole team analyzed the transcripts to combine teachers’ professional knowledge and didactic models to see how the development of students’ taste was supported. The whole team also planned lesson two, where the students were supposed to adopt a fair test to investigate which of four liquids that flowed the fastest (had the lowest viscosity). We followed the teacher instruction of the NTA material and made changes grounded in the didactic models of taste (author et al., 2015a), dialogic conversations (Lemke, 1990), and group and whole class conversations (Gonzáles-Howard & McNeill, 2016), that we thought could support the development of student taste and communication in planning and carrying out the fair test.

The analysis of the first lesson showed that the students did not talk much and showed little engagement in their investigations suggesting that they had relatively little experiences of joint discussions, which were also lifted by the teachers. A taste analysis also demonstrated that the purpose of the task actually did not encourage student talk. We therefore decided to adjust how the purpose of the next lesson on fair testing could be designed. The adjustments had the ambition of making the purpose of “Plan and conduct a fair test to investigate which of the liquids that flows fastest” potentially understandable and meaningful and so possible for the students to act upon. The adjustments were (1) using an analogy of fair competition in sports, a well-known activity rooted in the young learners experiences, when introducing fair testing, (2) making students suggestions of variables of a fair competition in sports continuous with the critical variables in the investigation, and (3) having the student groups investigate two liquids each, rather than all four, in order to create a need for sharing and discussing their results. Important aspects of developing taste were observed in lesson two: aesthetic moments of joy and humor, the use of introduced science concepts, everyday experiences addressing the purpose of the activity, and distinctions on ways to proceed for conducting a fair test. Analogies thus had the potential of helping young learners to make every-day experiences continuous with the science content and thus supporting the transformation of an everyday taste to a more science oriented one. To avoid the risk of “just” becoming a fun activity in general, the didactic model on signs of taste (author et al., 2015a) made it possible to continuously check that learning processes and taste development were directed towards the scientific purpose of the activity.

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