Abstract
Recent research has to a limited extent explored the characteristics of students’ conceptual practices as sociocultural phenomena in general and in science education in particular. I approach this issue by studying a group of students while solving a particular scientific problem from A to Z, and as part of this analyse how different cultural means (the knowledge domain and the tools in use) structure the students’ interactions and how their interpersonal relations change over this period of time. The aim is to illustrate how these cultural means intersect in productive and less productive ways during the students’ conceptual practices. The study has its point of departure in a design experiment where a group of four students, together with their teacher, solve different problems related to the biological phenomenon of sequencing a DNA molecule (the insulin gene). Video-recordings of the students’ interactions constitute the basis for this analysis. The cultural means strongly structure the students’ conceptual practices during their problem solving processes. Whereas the knowledge domain structured the whole process, the significant roles of the website and the computer-based 3D model of the insulin gene were especially apparent during the second part of the trajectory. The intersection of these cultural means appear productive in terms of disciplinary knowledge when the students’ became aware of how to handle this relationship. The interpersonal relations between the students and their teacher altered slightly in the beginning and became increasingly more fixed during the students’ progression.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Telenor Research and Development Division, Norway, the Network for IT-Research and Competence in Education at University of Oslo, Norway, and InterMedia at University of Oslo, Norway, for funding our research project, EduAction. Moreover, I am grateful to all that have contributed to the organisation and the fulfillment of this project. I also want to thank the teachers and students at Ringstabekk Secondary School for participating in the design experiment. Finally, I want to thank Sten Ludvigsen, Peter Scrimshaw, Roger Säljö, Palmyre Pierroux and the sociocultural research group at InterMedia, University of Oslo, Norway for fruitful discussions on previous drafts.
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Krange, I. Students’ conceptual practices in science education. Cult.Scie.Edu. 2, 171–203 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-006-9040-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-006-9040-y