The role of the scientific discovery narrative in middle school science education: An experimental study.

In an experimental study (N = 209), the authors compared the effects of exposure to typical middle-school written science content when presented in the context of the scientific discovery narrative and when presented in a more traditional nonnarrative format on 7th and 8th grade students in the United States. The development of texts was controlled so as to isolate the presence of the discovery narrative structure as the independent variable; outcome measures were developed according to the BEAR Assessment framework to be sensitive to a range of levels of understanding of presented information and to focus only on the conceptual material presented in the texts. Students exposed to the scientific discovery narrative performed significantly better on both immediate and delayed outcome measures. These findings are discussed in the context of a larger argument for the inclusion of the scientific discovery narrative in science instruction.

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