Abstract
One of the challenges of science education is for students to develop scientific knowledge that is personally meaningful and applicable to real-life issues. This article describes a middle-school science intervention fostering adolescents' critical reasoning in the context of HIV by strengthening their conceptual understanding of HIV biology. The intervention included two components: critical reasoning activities that fostered knowledge integration and application to real-world problem solving, and science writing activities that promoted argument building. Two seventh-grade classes participated in the study. One class participated in the critical reasoning and writing activities (CR&W); the other class participated in critical reasoning activities only (CR group). Results demonstrate significant pre- and posttest improvements on measures of students' HIV knowledge, HIV understanding, and critical reasoning about realistic scenarios in the context of HIV, with the improvements being greater in the CR&W group. The discussion focuses on the role of conceptual knowledge in health reasoning, the role of science writing in fostering knowledge integration, and the benefits of a "thinking curriculum" approach to integrated health and science education.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 844-863 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | Journal of Research in Science Teaching |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2007 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education