The impact of traditional textbook and epistemologically transparent text accounts on high school biology students' interest, comprehension, learning, and epistemology
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Textbooks are highly influential in defining both the curriculum and instruction of high school biology classrooms, yet most widely-used textbooks have been criticized for their extensive focus on declarative knowledge that fails to reflect the nature of the discipline. This study compares the impact of traditional textbook accounts and alternative "epistemologically transparent" accounts on students' interest, comprehension, learning, and epistemological perspectives. Unlike traditional textbooks that provide scientific facts and concepts with no justification, these alternative texts incorporate narratives of historical experiments that include authentic research questions, methods, and data that support scientists' claims. This study included two components -- four replications of a randomized experiment involving approximately 235 students and a think aloud/interview protocol with 24 students. Results of the experiment showed that text type did not have a differential impact on student interest or comprehension. Students in the treatment condition did show instances in which they transferred biological concepts and experimental designs to novel situations at a statistically higher rate than students in the control group. Students in the treatment group also exhibited more sophisticated epistemological perspectives than students in the control group. Think alouds and interviews with a small sub-set of students indicated that the epistemic elements embedded in the treatment text positively affected students' interest, comprehension, and trust in the text's claims. These results suggest that epistemologically transparent texts may function as helpful supplements to traditional textbook accounts in order to help students both learn biological concepts and how the discipline justifies these concepts.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2011 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Kloser, Matthew Joseph |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Education. |
| Primary advisor | Brown, Bryan Anthony |
| Thesis advisor | Brown, Bryan Anthony |
| Thesis advisor | Osborne, Jonathan |
| Thesis advisor | Shavelson, Richard J, 1942- |
| Advisor | Osborne, Jonathan |
| Advisor | Shavelson, Richard J, 1942- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Matthew Joseph Kloser. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the School of Education. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2011. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2011 by Matthew Joseph Kloser
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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