Writing Experiment Manuals in Science Education: The impact of writing, genre, and audience

Abstract

In this study, Grade 9 students wrote experiment manuals for their peers describing a simple physics investigation to explore whether air takes space. Peers executed these manuals and their processes were videotaped. In several experimental conditions, these videotapes were played back for authors. Then they had to rewrite the experiment manual. Three weeks later they wrote a letter‐of‐advice, explaining to peers how to write an experiment manual. Both measures (rewritten manuals and letter‐of‐advice) showed clear effects of the condition in which writers saw real‐time readers’ feedback on their own manual, on understanding of the genre of an experiment manual, as well as on the understanding of physics topics introduced.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a paper presented by the first two authors at the international conference on Ontological, Epistemological, Linguistic and Pedagogical Considerations of Language and Science Literacy: Empowering Research and Informing Instruction, Victoria, B.C., Canada, 12–15 September. The authors thank the organizers for the opportunity to leave their research discipline—effective teaching of language and literature—and to mingle in all sorts of literacy and hard sciences. They learnt that terms and concepts (“explaining”) in different sciences have different connotations. Happily, Brian Hand (USA) and Larry Yore (Canada) guided us with their comments on previous drafts on our way to embed the literacy jargon into the world of the science educators. Shari Yore’s meticulous editing practice taught us much about how to formulate crisp and clear text. The authors also wish to thank David Galbraith (Staffordshire, UK) for his inspiring discussions on writing and learning. Parts of this paper rely on the authors’ collaborative work.