Evolving explanations in high school biology

Engaging students in conducting their own scientific inquiry means engaging them in the construction of explanations about their world, because building such explanations is fundamentally what science is about. Students require support both for constructing their own explanations and for reflecting upon those explanations in ways that will help them to assess their quality and the strategies they use to build them. We are developing a high school biology curriculum which integrates technological supports for explanation construction with scaffolded classroom discussion activities to support students' reflection upon their explanations as scientific artifacts. Through this integrated curriculum we hope to develop students' ideas about the nature of scientific knowledge, their skills in conducting scientific investigations, and their understanding of core theories of biology. Using our software tool, ExplanationConstructor, students are successfully articulating coherent causal explanations for complex questions. Guided reflective discussions are encouraging students to evaluate their work according to how well they have used data to support their claims, and how well their explanations answer their questions. Yet, many students do not fully understand the criteria to which scientific explanations should be held, suggesting further work is needed to structure students' opportunities to reflect upon their work.