STUDENTS UNDERSTANDING OF THE OBJECTIVES AND PROCEDURES OF EXPERIMENTATION IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM

As part of a project to identify opportunities for reasoning that occu r in good but typical science classrooms, this study focuses on how si xth graders reason about the goals and strategies of experimentation a nd laboratory activities in school. Collaborating with teachers, we ex plore whether reasoning can be deepened by developing instruction that capitalizes more effectively on the classroom opportunities that aris e for fostering complex thinking and understanding. The design of the study includes (a) a baseline interview probing students' understandin g of experimentation in the context of a standard, 40-min ''hands-on'' activity that is part of the standard sixth-grade curriculum; (b) a 3 -week teaching study, in which five teachers, informed by the cognitiv e science research concerning the development of scientific reasoning, designed and taught a special experimentation unit in their classroom s; and (c) a series of follow-up interviews, in which students' unders tanding of experimentation was reexamined. The findings from the two l earning contexts-one more supportive of student reasoning than the oth er-inform us about the kinds of reasoning that are developing in middl e-school students and the forms of instruction best suited to exercisi ng those developing skills.