Design of a student lab program for nanoscience and technology – an intervention study on students’ perceptions of the Nature of Science, the Nature of Scientists and the Nature of Scientific Inquiry

ABSTRACT

Background: This article describes the design and the evaluation of a student lab program on the topic of nanoscience and technology (NST), mainly focusing on Nanoscience and its applications. The program was designed for students in grades 8–10 and was part of a larger outreach program of the Collaborative Research Center ‘Function by Switching’ at Kiel University. The Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER) served as a framework for the research-based design of the student lab.

Purpose: We aimed to develop an authentic science activity in the area of NST in order to support scientific inquiry learning and to provide a deeper understanding of scientific topics.

Sample: A total of 154 secondary school students from grades 8–10 of seven different secondary schools participated in this study.

Design and methods: A pre-post questionnaire with six subscales on students’ perceptions of the Nature of Science (NOS), Scientific Inquiry (NOSI) and the involved scientists (NOST) in the area of nanoscience and nanotechnology was applied.

Results: Results show that the applied explicit and reflective approach embedded in the nanoscience content significantly improved the participating students’ perceptions of NOS, NOSI and NOST facets. After the lab visit, students’ answers corresponded to a more adequate perception of today’s science and scientists. Some gender differences in learning gains were also detected.

Conclusion: The study served its main purpose which was to investigate a well-balanced strategy to develop authentic out-of-school-learning environments with a focus on NOS/NOSI/NOST. Testing students’ perceptions of the nature of nanoscience provided insights into students’ worlds and served as feedback for the lab program. The outcomes of this study might help to better understand and further develop authentic (nano)science programs in out-of-school settings and science outreach programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Out-of-school learning
• student lab
• Nature of Science (NOS)
• Nature of Scientific Inquiry (NOSI)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Station 6: Inspiration from Nature

Script for student assistants

For all stations a maximum time of 20 min is scheduled. Please plan for about 15 min, so that in case of any delays due to additional questions, in-depth discussion or writing answers, a small time buffer is available.

Materials

• Different natural materials, here: leaves with different surfaces/water-repellent properties (e.g. nasturtium, salvia, red cabbage, etc.)

• Different artificial materials, here: water-repellent fabric

• Syringe, needle, tweezers, microscopy slides, candle

Tasks of student assistant (in chronological order)

• Introduction: recall with the students the water-reflection experiment in the general introductory talk/video

• Lead over to the materials shown on the Table (leafs, textile …) by using the title of the station ‘Inspiration from Nature’.

• Evaluate students’ knowledge on context (exemplary questions: who of you can explain how the surface of this leaf looks like? Under what circumstances does a water drop rolls down a specific surface best?)

• Ask the students to feel materials and rank them according to visual and haptic aspects from rough to smooth

• Students are asked to argue if surfaces rather need to be rough or smooth in order to be water-repellent

• Let students re-evaluate their hypotheses after applying water on the different materials and visually checking for hydrophobic/hydrophilic properties, make them rearrange materials in ranking based on experiment results

• Discuss new results. There’s an assumed contradiction of rough surfaces and better hydrophobic properties (nasturtium more water repellent than salvia although smoother than salvia) –> what does roughness mean?

Hint: a beach with rough stones hurt the feet, but a beach with fine sand feels smooth (although more sand particles and therefore ‘rougher’). Students should argue on the scale related roughness of nasturtium, not visible but still rough)

• Thought experiment: if you were a researcher and would have observed the water repelling effect in nature, how could you make use of the phenomenon for practical applications? How would you modify surfaces in order to make them water repellent? (usually students come up with umbrella, anorak, …

• Researcher task: you now have this flat glass surface (microscope slide) and should modify it for your customer so it gets water repellent. What would you do? Suggest an experimental approach.

(Usually students come up with the idea to modify the surface so it gets rough.)

• Hold the microscopy slide with tweezers into the candle flame. Explain that during combustion a fine carbon black film is grown on the slide. Fine carbon particles create a structured surface.

• Let the students test the water-repellency of the newly created surface. Discuss shortly nano research and its applications in chemistry and material sciences.

Questions to be answered by students individually in written assessment (right after station work):

1. Content question: Which natural phenomena can you convey from this experiment? How can you imitate this phenomena?

2. NOS/NOSI/NOST question: How do researchers get ideas for their research topics?

Support written assessment by active discussion with the students.

Scale Relevance (of research)

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Scale Validity (of research)

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Scale Framework conditions (of research)

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Scale Characteristics (of research)

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Scale Tasks (of research)

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Scale Communication (of research)

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [CRC677].