Exploring students’ epistemological knowledge of models and modelling in science: results from a teaching/learning experience on climate change

ABSTRACT

The scientific community has been debating climate change for over two decades. In the light of certain arguments put forward by the aforesaid community, the EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching such as incorporating environmental issues into the scientific curriculum, thereby helping to make schools a place of civic education. However, despite these European recommendations, relatively little emphasis is still given to climate change within science curricula. Climate change, although potentially engaging for students, is a complex topic that poses conceptual difficulties and emotional barriers, as well as epistemological challenges. Whilst the conceptual and emotional barriers have already been the object of several studies, students’ reactions to the epistemological issues raised by climate changes have so far been rarely explored in science education research and thus are the main focus of this paper. This paper describes a study concerning the implementation of teaching materials designed to focus on the epistemological role of ‘models and the game of modelling’ in science and particularly when dealing with climate change. The materials were implemented in a course of 15 hours (five 3-hour lessons) for a class of Italian secondary-school students (grade 11; 16–17 years old). The purpose of the study is to investigate students’ reactions to the epistemological dimension of the materials, and to explore if and how the material enabled them to develop their epistemological knowledge on models.

KEYWORDS:

• Science education
• climate change
• models and modelling in science
• epistemology
• secondary-school students

Acknowledgements

The authors thank researchers and teachers who collaborated in the study and offered important suggestions for the analysis, in particular, Rolando Rizzi, Paola Fantini, Francesca Pongiglione, Marta Gagliardi, Rosa Maria Sperandeo and Claudio Fazio. The corresponding author especially thanks the Science and Technology Education Group at King's College London, who hosted her, and the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), who provided financial support for the visit.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Giulia Tasquier is a post-doc research fellow in physics education at the Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Bologna, Italy.

Olivia Levrini is professor in physics education at the Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Bologna, Italy.

Justin Dillon is professor of science and environmental education and Head of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

Notes

1 In the simulations, the relation between the phenomena of absorption and emission is not completely clear; hence, several students’ difficulties can be related to such an aspect.

2 In the paper, the Authors call ‘heat’ the infrared radiation. We believe that such a choice is deeply dangerous and can be source of serious misunderstanding since it introduces a confusion between two different physical phenomena (transferring energy by heat and by radiation). Such misunderstanding can emphasize well-known problems about heat when students have to study thermodynamics (Besson, 2009).

3 Data tools and students’ answers were in Italian, the native language of the students. The whole translations were made or revised from a native English speaker who works in the scientific publishing.

4 Students did not address explicitly models and modelling during their scholastic career. They dealt with models only implicitly during their studies of mechanics, thermodynamics and optics. As far as thermodynamics is concerned, they class had addressed the concepts of temperature, heat, work of dissipative forces and internal energy. During the study of optics, they met the concept of light as electromagnetic wave and they had analysed the electromagnetic spectrum.

5 The Lakatos’ claim that we are paraphrasing is: ‘Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind’ (1971).