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Jennifer Cartier	Cynthia Passmore	James Stewart

By the time they get to high school, students have had at least 9 years of learning to play the "game" of school. They know what it takes to win: Just give the right answer. In the field of science, this approach places undue emphasis on the end products of scientific inquiry, depriving students of the opportunity to learn about the practices through which scientific theories and explanations are constructed.

Fortunately, instruction can be reorganized to dramatically change the nature of the school game. In new instructional contexts, students participate in making and assessing knowledge claims. They learn to recognize these activities as necessary to achieving understanding in science.

Jennifer Cartier, Cynthia Passmore, and James Stewart argue that a knowledge of scientific practice is an important part of becoming scientifically literate. Cartier, Passmore, and Stewart are part of a team of university researchers and local teachers known as MUSE (Modeling for Understanding in Science Education), headquartered at WCER's National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science (NCISLA).¹ They have articulated a view of classroom understanding that is consistent with science as it is actually practiced.

The practice framework designed by MUSE recognizes essential elements of inquiry, yet is general enough to be useful in classrooms. The framework shows the central role of models in asking questions, recognizing data patterns, constructing explanations, and providing the criteria for judging knowledge claims.

Cartier and colleagues say this framework reflects a recent shift away from the view of science as a largely descriptive enterprise. The current view holds that explanation is a central, if not the central, goal of scientific endeavor. "Scientific inquiry is fundamentally about reducing the world to order," Passmore says. "Those reductions take the form of explanations." Inquiry in science is of primary importance. In fact, the MUSE team has identified the ability to participate in inquiry as an essential component of understanding in science.

Models in scientific practice

Most often explanations involve the intersection of some causal model, or models, with data from the natural world. A scientific explanation is a careful mapping of a model to data. For example, an explanation for why we see phases of the moon describes the movement of the Moon relative to the Earth and Sun (a model of celestial motion). This model results in the predictable data pattern of phase changes throughout the month.

In some cases, models themselves become the objects of inquiry. When a new question is asked—for example, does light always behave as a wave? does genetic drift account for evolutionary changes in some species?—scientists assess existing models to see if they can address the question. If they cannot, scientists revise the existing models or develop new ones.

Engaging students in exploring phenomena (such as the phases of the Moon) and developing or invoking models to account for those phenomena is a powerful way to get students started in classroom inquiry. As students explore specific phenomena, they participate in practice by developing explanations and beginning to formulate their own questions. Students' questions are often quite sophisticated. For example, one student participant in MUSE research learned about the phases of the Moon by exploring local data. Then the student asked whether the same pattern would be visible from the southern hemisphere. This prompted him to gather information, print and electronic, to answer the question. In this case, the student was probing the fruitfulness of his model.

Implementing the MUSE framework
The MUSE team designed and implemented an introductory unit for ninth-graders at a local, suburban Midwestern high school. The teachers used the unit to set the stage for the whole school's science sequence. One of the more complicated phenomena the students attempted to explain was that of the seasons. They identified several seasonal data patterns including the midday angular height of the Sun, average temperature, maximum shadow length, and average day length. The students found that all these patterns depended on both time of year and global location. The students were able to make sense of this complicated set of data with their teachers' help. The MUSE practice framework helped teachers redirect the students when necessary and focus their attention on creating explanations for patterns in nature, rather than simply attempting to offer the "right answer."

The MUSE view of scientific practice as it occurs in classrooms may have important implications for the reform efforts under way in the U.S. If the goal of "understanding for all" is to be achieved, science educators must recognize that understanding in science develops through practice. Educators must design classrooms where realistic practice can happen. As a community, educators can go beyond a simple call for inquiry in science classrooms to a clear vision that can guide curriculum and professional development.

For more information, contact Cartier at jcartier@facstaff.wisc.edu or Passmore at cmpassmo@students.wisc.edu, or visit the MUSE Web site at www.wcer.wisc.edu/ncisla/muse.

¹ Research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

Material in this article was originally delivered as a paper at the sixth annual conference of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group, November 2001.