students perceptions of writing for learning in secondary school science

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Students Perceptions of Writingfor Learning in Secondary SchoolScience

VAUGHAN PRAIN, BRIAN HANDLa Trobe University, Bendigo, P.O. Box 199, Bendigo, Victoria, 3550, Australia

Received 15 May 1997; revised 23 February 1998; accepted 17 August 1998

ABSTRACT: The implementation of writing-for-learning strategies within science class-rooms requires changes in the way in which students engage with the subject. Specificwriting tasks require students to address concepts of science and also to focus on issuesof purpose, audience, topic, method of text production, and writing type. This articlereports on students’ perceptions of using writing as a component of their science learning.The results, collected over 4 years, have been organized to include students’ perceptionsof writing in science, learning, ownership, purpose, and science. These results are thendiscussed in terms of students’ developing metacognition and epistemologies of science.The study concludes by discussing the implications arising for further research.

q 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 83:151–162, 1999.

INTRODUCTION

Recent reviews of the research literature on the role of writing for learning in secondaryscience have identified various key issues (Holliday, Yore, & Alvermann, 1994; Prain &Hand, 1996a; Rivard, 1994). Rivard noted that much of this research has focused onattempts to identify necessary classroom conditions and teacher practices to promote learn-ing. These attempts have included teacher change in terms of understandings and strategiesto promote learning (Keystone 1993) and appropriate tasks to enhance learning (Bereiter& Scardamalia, 1987). Holliday et al. (1994, p. 885) argued that there is the need to developa conception of writing that emphasizes “exploration, expressive inquiry, discovery, prob-lem-solving, decision-making and knowledge construction.” Concurring with this assess-ment of the need to rethink the role of writing in learning, Prain and Hand (1996a)suggested that, if teachers diversified the types, purposes, readerships, and methods ofproduction of student writing, then enhanced learning and higher order thinking would beencouraged. Recognition is given to the fact that different combinations will lead to dif-ferent learning outcomes.

However, these reviews also noted various concerns. Holliday et al. (1994, p. 885)asserted that “current conceptions of writing to learn appear to be embryonic and frag-mented,” and that “little consideration has been given to the internal cognitive processes

Correspondence to: B. Hand; e-mail:[email protected]

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In other words, the strategies learners use to negotiate particular task demands in relationto writing for learning need to be researched further. Rivard (1994, p. 975) noted thatstudents’ roles in the “instructional environment” of the classroom have remained ne-glected, and these are important “contextual issues” in determining the success or failureof particular teaching strategies for writing for learning. Prain and Hand (1996a) arguedthat, if student writing was to lead to learning, then this writing must be structured in sucha way that students understand and address interconnected task demands. This study re-views the literature on student perceptions in relation to writing for learning and reportson an ongoing research project that sought to identify the effects on student learning ofthe introduction of diversified writing tasks in secondary science.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Student perceptions, other than in terms of assessing the effectiveness of different tasksfor promoting learning, have been largely overlooked in the research on student writingfor learning. As Rivard (1994, pp. 976–978) has observed, for students to learn fromwriting they must “possess the necessary metacognitive knowledge,” and must not onlyknow “what strategies are available for enhancing learning,” but also “understand how andwhen to use them and why they may be useful.” From this perspective, if students are tolearn from writing, in contrast to the use of writing to display learning, then they will needto develop a range of skills relating to the procedures and rationale for learning throughwriting. However, Rivard commented that research into students’ perceptions of theseissues has largely been ignored in favor of testing the learning outcomes of different writingtasks and instructions against one another.

Several studies have investigated student perceptions, but in relation to links betweentheir understanding of scientific concepts and their experiences of learning science as aschool subject, especially in relation to oral discourses and learning involved with talkingabout science. Roth and Roychoudbury (1994, p. 5) argued that students’ perceptions aboutthe nature of scientific knowledge as well as the roles of their teachers and themselves inthe classroom are crucial but ignored factors in effective learning. They commented thatthe perceptions of students, their “epistemological commitments,” have largely been ig-nored in a research agenda focused predominantly on teachers’ beliefs and practices inscience teaching. In seeking to address this gap in the literature, the researchers investigatedthe factors affecting 42 junior-level students’ epistemic understandings of physics. Theseresearchers concluded that students held a variety of contradictory beliefs about the natureof scientific knowledge as well as the classroom procedures that might elicit this knowl-edge. Students often wavered between objectivist perspectives, where knowledge is un-derstood as absolute truths independent of knowers, and evaluative constructivistperspectives, where knowledge is viewed as provisional, consensual, and open to reasonedrevision. These students were familiar with learning environments that favored small-groupnegotiation of viewpoints and tentative formulations of solutions and answers, even if suchprocedures were not always aligned with their views about the objectivist nature andorigins of scientific knowledge.

Solomon (1991) and Lederman and O’Malley (1990) identified that constructivist pro-cedures in the classroom can also encourage more fallibilist student perspectives of sci-entific knowledge. However, these researchers noted a range of further questions to beaddressed, especially in terms of the effects of teachers’ changing epistemologies on stu-dents’ emerging understandings of science knowledge and science as inquiry in relationto their classroom experiences. The researchers indicated that more investigation was re-

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between classroom procedures and “authorized” understandings.Hand, Treagust, and Vance (1997) provided a partial answer to these issues related to

negotiation in their analysis of changes in students’ roles within a classroom orientedtoward constructivist epistemologies and procedures. These researchers asserted that, as aresult of changed roles and more scope for negotiated understandings in the classroom,students were likely to develop higher order metacognitive approaches to learning. Stu-dents were more willing to offer tentative or provisional answers or explanations, betterable to monitor their own learning strategies, and aware that their learning was more self-directed. This suggests that there are likely to be pedagogical advantages in a teachingapproach that presents scientific knowledge as problematic rather than objectivist; how-ever, these findings leave open-ended the question of whether such an approach might, inthe long term, supplant or modify students’ objectivist perceptions of scientific knowledge,especially in relation to student writing.

Sutton (1996) has argued that students need to be given a variety of opportunities touse language to explain and justify their understanding of science and scientific language.He claimed that students’ beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge are stronglylinked to their beliefs about the language of “ready made science,” where the correct, exactterminology is perceived to confirm the objective reality of the concepts to which thelanguage refers. Changes to these epistemological assumptions can only be achieved byaltering the role and student perception of the language of science. He asserted that onestrategy to achieve such a change, among others, is the study of scientific writing fromhistorical sources to encourage students to perceive the provisional nature of the hypothesesfound in these writings.

While his research has made a valuable contribution to understanding the ways thelanguage of science determines students’ perceptions of this subject, his research has notundertaken empirical study of the effects on students’ perceptions of their experiences intackling writing tasks that aimed to consolidate their understanding of scientific concepts.This article begins to address some of the issues arising as a consequence of students beingasked to use different writing types as a means to construct an understanding of science.

RESEARCH CONTEXT

The data reported in this study are part of a long-term research project (1993–1996)that focused on examining writing-for-learning strategies within secondary schools. Themajor focus of the study was to identify any changes to student perceptions of learning inscience arising from expanded uses of writing for learning in science. To achieve this aim,the following activities were implemented: (1) the devising, trialing, and evaluation of avariety of writing tasks where students construct, revise, clarify, and reflect upon theirunderstanding of scientifically acceptable concepts; (2) the identification and developmentof teacher strategies to enhance student learning in the range of contexts; (3) investigationof the conditions necessary to maximize the learning potentiality effectiveness of students’writing as they construct and respond to different types and purposes for writing; and (4)the development a model to inform and guide teachers’ understanding and practice in theimplementation of constructivist-based uses of writing for learning.

Setting and Sample. During the time of the study, there was a team of eight secondaryschool teachers, three research assistants, and two researchers involved in the ongoingproject. The teachers were drawn from three junior secondary colleges (years 7–10) andfrom the city’s secondary college (years 11–12). In total, 11 classes participated in trialinga variety of writing-for-learning strategies. The schools are located in a rural city of pop-

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as disadvantaged because of the socioeconomic profile of parents; the senior secondarycollege is the largest provider of senior schooling in the state with an annual enrollmentof approximately 1600 students.

In-service treatment and implementation. The project incorporated an in-service com-ponent linked to the goals of the researchers, specifically to introduce teachers to construc-tivist pedagogy where necessary, and to theoretical and practical issues of writing forlearning strategies. The in-service component consisted of in-service sessions throughouteach year held at the researchers’ university, regular meetings at the teachers’ schoolsettings, researchers’ participation through teaching individual sessions to model writing-for-learning strategies, and resource support from research assistants in planning units ofwork. The researchers attempted, at all times, to encourage the teachers to have a senseof ownership of the program by encouraging them to pursue particular strategies or sciencetopics that they thought best suited their classes. They were encouraged to choose subjectmatter with which they felt most comfortable, to choose the particular year level of studentsthey felt most able to explore the new strategies with, and to use the researchers as anadditional resource rather than leaders of the project.

Each teacher implemented a number of different tasks within his or her classroomsthroughout the period of involvement. The implementation of a broad range of writingtypes over the period of the research project was viewed by the researchers as a means toovercome Hawthorne-effect responses by students. Examination of the engagement byteachers and students in the five dimensions associated with each writing task as identifiedby Prain and Hand (1996b)—that of purpose, type, audience, method of text production,and topic—was the central focus of the research. Teachers were asked to trial a numberof different writing types including brochures, creative stories, poetry, rap songs, travelbrochures, letters to the editor of a newspaper, concept and story maps, and PowerPointpresentations (a computer slide-making program). In each, the students were encouragedto write for a different audience, such as peers, younger students, the general public, andfor textbook readers, using various methods of production, such as computer-generatedtext, incorporating diagrams within text, both in pairs and individually.

Data collection. Data collection classroom observations of teaching sessions consistedof field-note records of conversations with students, semistructured interviews with stu-dents on completion of each topic, and collection of student products. In total, 62 studentswere interviewed with questions centered on their understanding of the purpose of thetask, their sense of engagement with the particular task, their perceptions of the task’svalue for learning, and their attitude toward the task. Nearly all students within this studyhad the opportunity to implement a number of different writing tasks, with many differentwriting tasks implemented, and these were undertaken across a variety of different loca-tions. The distribution of students was: year 1, 8 students; year 2, 12 students; year 3, 12students; and year 4, 30 students.

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

In reporting on this aspect of the study, the researchers grouped analyses of students’responses and completed written work under the following headings: student perceptionsof writing in science; student perceptions of learning through diversified writing in science;student perceptions of ownership and diversified writing in science; student perceptionsof the purpose of diversified writing in science; and student perceptions of science lessons.All student interviews and field-note data were coded and analyzed using these categories.The two researchers and two research assistants coded the data independently, and dis-



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existed, and refine and clarify discrepancies in coding. The number of students scored (aspositive, negative, or neutral) in interview analyses in response to particular questionsvaried across the 4-year period of the study. This accounts for the variations in studentnumbers that appear in the text.

Student Perceptions of Writing in Science

The students involved in this study were exposed to a variety of diversified writingtasks. These tasks included creative writing exercises: the writing of brochures, letters, andnewspaper articles; construction of posters; concept mapping; and computer slide-showpresentations. The tasks were chosen to complement the topic of study and they differedfrom one class to another. In addition, other task factors were varied, such as the targetaudience or readership, the method of text production (individuals, pairs, groups, redraft-ing, pen, computer, etc.), and the timing of the writing (at the start, during, or at thecompletion of a unit of study). For some tasks, the entire class would write in the samegenre (writing type); for example, writing a travel brochure for aliens advertising our solarsystem. In other tasks, the students were given the choice of a variety of types; for example,in responding to a story scenario regarding motion in space, students could choose one offour genres, a short story, a letter, a newspaper article, or a science journal article.

Interviews and classroom observations revealed students reacted overwhelmingly pos-itively to these tasks. For example, 84.9% ( ) of students interviewed reacted pos-n 5 53itively when asked how they felt about doing the task. Students repeatedly (67.9%, n 5

) stated that they preferred writing tasks that involved them actively and personally in28science learning, as compared with passive writing tasks. They often contrasted the en-joyment of learning through diversified writing to more traditional methods of instruction.Taryn, a year 7 female student who disliked science, commented: “it’s boring because youcopy off the board all the time,” but then stated that the creative writing exercise “was funand I wish we could do things like that and experiments all the time.” Tony, a year 10male student, stated: “This is a bit more interesting I think than just writing out stuff fromthe board.” Amber, a year 9 female student, echoed this sentiment: “I particularly likewriting essays and the creative writing. . . . I like researching stuff, I like getting a topicand then having to find out about it.” Nicholas, a year 7 male student, commented; “I waspretty excited, I thought it was a good idea for a project. . . . It was new, I hadn’t heardof an idea like that before and you had to use your head to think, not just look up infor-mation, you had to use imagination as well.”

Their perceptions about previous passive writing tasks in science and their apparentnegative attitudes toward these tasks suggest that diversifying writing tasks has a positiveinfluence on the students’ attitude to science in general. For many students, diversifiedwriting tasks provided challenge, variety, and enjoyment. Students preferred writing stylesthat allowed them to be actively and creatively engaging in science. In summary, studentsindicated that they preferred a learning situation in which they were actively engaged inconstructing meaning but recognized that classroom writing tasks did not consistentlypromote this engagement.

Student Perceptions of Learning through Diversified Writing in Science

Diversified writing tasks were perceived by most students (88.9%, ) as having an 5 36positive effect on the quality of their learning in science. Students were able to articulatemany of the learning advantages that they experienced through diversified writing activi-

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them to reflect on their own thinking in more depth. Cedra, a year 11 female student,commented that constructing a poster “helps because you’re putting what it says in thetext book into practice a bit more, you are actually taking what’s written and having tomap it out in your own terms and so you end up understanding it exactly.” Mark, a year11 male student, felt that concept mapping “just shows you a clearer picture in your head,you can’t really understand it by just reading the actual paragraphs. You put somethingdown in front of you in point form or whatever, you just get straight to the point, you canunderstand it better.” Nicholas, a year 7 male student, recognized that “. . . transferringit over into writing, I had to really think about it . . .”

Students recognized that this writing enhanced their understanding and retention ofscience concepts as a result of the depth of thinking that was required to complete manyof these diversified writing activities. As Sharon, a year 11 female student stated: “. . .it makes you remember it more, if I had just written it down I would have had to reviseit and revise it to remember it but this way I can have the picture in my head and get thegist of it a bit.” The diversified writing tasks also allowed students to integrate appropriatelyand extend what was being learned with what they already knew. This student-centeredframework for learning fits with both constructivist learning principles and “good sciencelearning,” as described by Gunstone (1995).

When asked how she felt about her learning during a writing task Taryn commented:

Yes, because just copying off the board, it’s not your own work and it’s not your mindwhat you’re putting into your book. You take it home to your parents and stuff and theyexpect it’s your work and it’s not really, it’s just the teacher’s and I liked that [the writing]better because I learnt more about the solar system. . . . It sort of stays in my head morebecause I had researched it and it stays in my head.

These comments demonstrate the two aspects that make the diversified writing worth-while: increased learning and increased enjoyment. In summary, the diversified writingtasks not only required students to use these metacognitive processes (i.e., to learn how tomonitor the success with which they addressed task demands), but also appeared to bepreferred by students in comparison to the more traditional tasks.

Student Perceptions of Ownership and Diversified Writing in Science

An important trend found in student comments was the increased sense of ownershipand control over learning that was experienced via diversified writing. Ownership andcontrol seemed to be an important link between positive attitudes and writing tasks inscience for these students. For example when asked how writing supports learning, Amy,a year 9 female student, commented:

Note taking really doesn’t, it’s just copying something that he [the teacher] thinks or heunderstands straight down to us, but with creative writing it’s better because we get tohave our own imagination. . . . you had to think about it. Oh, is this really what happens?Sort of thing. With just writing down off the board, it’s just like what he thinks, I mightnot agree, I might not have a clue or care about it, but then with the creative writing itwas better because I got to think, hey, this is what I want.

An important aspect of students’ sense of ownership related to the opportunity to developtheir thoughts before encountering authorized views. Jessica’s response to a creative writ-



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chance to put our ideas down before someone told us what it was all about, so we knewhow much we understood” (year 10 female student). Ian’s comment reinforced this sen-timent; he stated: “This was good because you are actually writing what you think first ofall and then you learn a bit more about it” (year 10 male student).

Classroom observations during one writing activity revealed the importance of studentownership and choice over writing tasks. When control over the activity was dominatedby the teacher, students’ attitude toward the task was diminished. Dale, a year 9 student,who had come up with several suggestions for topics for a writing task, indicated that theteacher had said no to his preferences and dictated what topic he should write on. Dalealso stated that he would have preferred to have chosen his own topic. That the task wasnot completed may be attributable in part to a lack of interest and control in the learningsituation.

Student Perceptions of Purpose of Diversified Writing in Science

Interestingly, student perceptions of the teacher’s purpose in setting varied writing tasksin science revealed a diversity of understanding as to the rationale of using writing activitiesfor learning. Many students recognized the value of the tasks in terms of enhanced learning.Sharon, a year 11 female student, made this insightful comment:

Probably to make us think clearer, to make us understand better and trying to find differentways that we take in knowledge because some people can do it by listening to it and otherpeople need to write it down and maybe other people need to make it up for themselves.

However, students often tended to cite assessment or say that they did not know whythe teacher had set writing tasks as part of the learning experience. Frequently, studentsnominated trivial purposes, such as Margaret’s comment that her teacher set the task to“see our creative skills with our writing” (year 10 female student). In commenting abouthis teacher’s purpose for setting an assignment entailing the production of a computer slidepresentation to explain bonding in a particular material, one student focused on the mediumused, “I guess just to get the hang of the computers, the use of it, something different”(Matthew, year 11 male student).

Many students gave little thought to how different learning activities could be beneficial.Some took an automated approach to science learning in which they viewed activities as“just a series of hoops they have to jump through.” Others saw little purpose at all in theactivities in which they were engaged. For example, during one lesson, a student angrilyreplied to questioning that she could see no purpose in doing the activity set and that therewas nothing beneficial to be learned by the activity. When given two very good learningoutcomes the student’s attitude changed radically and she was happy to complete the task.Although many of the students we spoke to clearly understood the learning gains that theyexperienced through specific diversified writing tasks, often these same students failed torecognize that the tasks were set to encourage higher order thinking and deeper learning.

Student Views of Science Lessons

When asked the question, “What do you think science is?,” typical students’ repliesprompted responses such as “experiments,” “pracs” (laboratory activities), “research,” and“discovering.” Students generally perceived science to be very different from some othersubjects, suggesting that science is about “hands-on,” “practical” work, and involves “dis-

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different because it is “not just sitting and writing as in other subjects,” “you get to domore fun stuff,” and “finding out new things, and just experimenting and learning newstuff about the world.”

Students’ attitudinal comments suggest that, when they hold positive attitudes towardscience, it is often due to this practical, exploratory focus. For example, when asked thequestion, “Do you like/dislike science?,” Mike, a year 7 male student, commented “I thinkit’s really fun, probably the best subject out of everything. . . . I just like watching thingsreact and gurgle and blow up and things like that.” Christina, a year 9 female student, said“I only like science when I’m doing things. Doing is better for learning.” The majority ofstudents asked this question responded in a similar way—that they liked science becauseit allowed them to discover and actively participate.

However, the students’ perceptions of the reality of what often happens in the classroomare contradictory to their perceptions about science being a subject where they are activelyconstructing meaning. Although science, as a subject, is perceived to involve discoverylearning and activity, the reality is often that “We do experiments every now and then,they’re fun, but we don’t do many of them” (Cameron, year 7 male student). Studentsrepeatedly described science lessons as scenes dominated by passive learning; for example;“The teacher just tells you what he is going to do . . . he will probably write some notesup on the board, maybe ask us what we think about it, and then we will just write otherpeople’s opinions” (Amy, year 9 female student); and “. . . usually [the teacher] writesthings on the board and we just have to copy it straight into our book and it’s very boring,it’s not really our own work . . . ” (Taryn, year 7 female student)

While active participation in learning, through hands-on experience, is reflected in pos-itive attitudinal statements, the reverse is true when passive learning experiences are thenorm. For example Kyle (a year 7 female student) said “I like it and I dislike it. Sometimesit’s really boring when you’re copying off the board.” Travis (a year 7 male student)indicated “I dislike the part how we always have to copy from the board.” These commentswere reinforced by Craig (a year 9 male student) who said “It was not very enjoyablebecause all we did was sit there, he would just blab something out, going on and on aboutone thing, write something down, explain it again and again.” In summary, students’ viewsof science lessons became more positive due to the introduction of writing-for-learningstrategies.

DISCUSSION

This study suggests that the implementation of writing-for-learning strategies have var-ious effects on students’ skills in, and perceptions of, learning science. The results indicatethat diversification of writing types enhances opportunities for students to develop higherorder thinking skills, including metacogntive understandings. At the same time, the find-ings suggest that students were not always able to articulate sharply the purposes or broaderrationale for learning through writing.

At various times, students were required to reorder, synthesize, elaborate, and reprocessconcepts and ideas central to each topic, to hypothesize, interpret, and persuade (Schu-macher & Nash, 1991). Our findings suggest that students perceived their role in this kindof writing as far more active than traditional forms of writing in science. Their perceptionsalso suggest that the requirements of this writing encouraged them to develop higher ordercognitive skills, enabling them to understand more clearly their own learning methods,including metacognitive awareness of these strategies. Metacognition can also be viewedas more than an awareness of the learning process in that it incorporates executive control



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Top of textBase of textof the learning process (Craig & Yore, 1995). Executive control means that a “student has

the skills to design, control and guide his or her learning process” (Berry & Sahlberg,1996), and is also able to monitor degrees of success with task completion and to adjuststrategies where appropriate.

The results from this study suggest that the students became more metacognitive in boththese senses. They were more aware of how to approach their own learning, and alsodeveloped the ability to judge whether their writing efforts were “on track,” especiallywhen they had opportunities to get feedback from other students about the clarity of theirrepresentations of concepts. Students were positive about, and aware of, the need to be-come active in the learning process, and were able to begin to articulate why the processof writing was useful to them in learning particular science concepts. These findings areconsistent with the results obtained in a study by Ebenezer and Zoller (1993, p. 175) whofound that “students do not appreciate the most prevailing contemporary practices in sci-ence classes, perceived by them as mainly the copying of the teacher’s notes, and that theyprefer science teaching and learning in which they take an active and responsible part.”However, the researchers are cautious in suggesting that there is clear evidence that stu-dents will automatically take executive control of their learning. Several points are perti-nent here.

Student understanding of the value of this control, as part of the broader rationale forlearning through writing, is only likely to occur in contexts where students have hadconsiderable experience with tackling writing tasks that they have ownership of, ratherthan tasks the teachers have devised and implemented. In other words, writing tasks thatdevelop metacognitive skills generally require students to explore or consolidate knowl-edge rather than simply to test understandings. However, despite the strong teacher em-phasis on evaluation with much of the student writing in this project, students were awareof and appreciated their ownership of the writing process, and were able to explain thevalue of the particular writing task in terms of how it helped them learn concepts moreeffectively. The example of the boy who was not able to control his choice of topic, andconsequently did not complete the task, indicates a clear preference for this aspect ofownership of learning.

The students’ inability to articulate a more complete rationale for the learning processesinvolved in writing is evident in their lack of understanding of the broader purposes forundertaking the particular writing tasks. Although students had an awareness of what thetask was, how the task helped them, and of their enjoyment in involvement with the task,they were unable to outline clearly the broader learning purpose(s) of the task. Studentstended to focus on a perceived teacher-oriented purpose for writing, such as computer useor assessment, rather than understand how the demands of the particular writing taskrequired them to undertake a range of cognitive operations. Even though the teachersindicated the purpose of the task and provided some basic framework to assist students inplanning, students did not move past surface-level understanding of the writing as a strat-egy to enable them to “think more clearly.”

There may be various reasons for this pattern. Perhaps the wide age range of studentsin the study (11–16) suggests that this deeper understanding of writing purposes is relatedto the general cognitive development of students and difficult for younger learners tounderstand or articulate. Another explanation may be drawn from the specific content ofclassroom discussion. The teachers did not focus on this issue of a broader rationale interms of direct teaching or discussion, and hence the students’ perceptions were not“guided” or “prompted” to elicit particular responses. Certainly, students’ instrumentalviews on learning are indicative of a general ethos of operating strategically to meet schooldemands rather than focusing on extended reflection about the broader purposes of school-

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epistemological perspective, not many students were able to understand and explain howand why specific tasks were beneficial to their general development as learners of science.

This limited capacity to explain how knowledge claims are established in science inrelation to learning through writing, or to understand how writing could act as an episte-mological tool, was also reflected in their views on science lessons. Nearly all students ininitial interviews perceived science lessons to be different from other school subjects be-cause of the ability to “discover stuff” through “doing experiments.” Students were ableto distinguish clearly between their expectations and the reality of the typical scienceclassroom, with the majority indicating that there was a mismatch. Science classes wereviewed as a place where the teachers talked and there were copious amounts of notes tocopy down. However, students did not appear to relate the different applications of writing-for-learning strategies, to science as a subject. Students tended not to link the requirementto define clearly conceptual understanding within a piece of writing with the broadernotions of thinking “scientifically” and following the broader procedural strategies asso-ciated with science and knowledge; that is, using the necessary supporting data to meetepistemic demands for evidence, warrants, and knowledge claims. This potential link be-tween writing for learning in science and understanding how writing could function as anepistemological tool in this subject area was not the initially intended focus of the research,but emerged as an interesting issue for researchers, given the boundaries and tendenciesof students’ perceptions in this study. The study clearly poses the question of how teachersmight encourage students to make the link between writing for learning and what countsas knowledge in science lessons, and the links between students’ knowledge of their ownwriting processes as learners and writing “scientifically.”

A number of recent studies that have begun to examine the link between school scienceand students’ epistemologies of learning and science have noted some significant chal-lenges for teachers. Ryan and Aikenhead (1992) suggested that, because no specific teach-ing of the nature of science has taken place in schools, it was not surprising that studentswere unaware of the basis for knowledge claims in science. Novak (1990, p. 41) statedthat “high school students have become adapted to primarily rote-mode learning,” and toget them to both question their own learning and examine the broader questions of learningis difficult. Berry and Sahlberg (1996, p. 33) indicated that “for the middle school pupilit is difficult to conceptualise their own metacognition and to give clear personal statementabout it.” This issue is further complicated, as Roth and Roychoudbury (1994) pointedout, by the tension between students’ objectivist and constructivist perceptions of theepistemology of science. A further issue is the challenge of devising effective researchprocedures for eliciting what for students is perhaps tacit rather than conscious knowledge.Berry and Sahlberg (1996, p. 34) claimed that one of the ways to develop individuals’conceptual metacognition was through reflective practices and that “one of the most pow-erful means of reflecting . . . is by writing or drawing.” However, this still leaves veryopen the question of how such representations might be interpreted, either by researchersor students, as demonstrating metacognitive skills.

Although the results from the study reported in this work are encouraging in showingthat students are aware of the benefits of using writing for learning and are becoming moreaware of their own learning strategies, there are important implications that arise.

IMPLICATIONS

The findings of this study indicate that Rivard’s (1994) account of what students mustknow if they are to understand fully what learning from writing might mean is not easily



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Top of textBase of textachieved. While there is evidence from our study that the diversification of writing de-

mands developed student knowledge of metacognitive skills and strategies, and of howand when to use them, many students were unable to give a broader account of why thesestrategies may be useful. In other words, students were unable to perceive that writing wasa tool for developing their own knowledge in science. Also, they failed to make the linkbetween writing tasks and learning to write “scientifically,” not in the sense of standardscientific report writing, but in relation to the use of evidential claims to substantiateunderstandings. The writing tasks developed the students’ capacity to “translate” theirunderstandings for different contexts and readership requirements, but these tasks tendednot to affect their sense of what science is or the broader role of writing in constructingand engaging with scientific knowledge.

This raises the question of how teachers might develop such student knowledge. Whilewe agree with the findings of other researchers (Berry & Sahlberg, 1996; Novak, 1990;Ryan & Aikenhead, 1992) that students struggle to explain the basis for knowledge claimsin science, our research suggests that student reflection on these questions is not necessarilyfacilitated simply by the act of writing. This is especially the case when students perceivetheir writing to be a consequential record of their understanding rather than part of howthat understanding was developed. In other words, if writing tasks mainly require studentsto record “resolved” knowledge for evaluation or assignment work, then it is not surprisingthat they do not perceive writing to be a way of developing knowledge, or to be anepistemological tool. In the present study the distinction some of the students made be-tween science as “activity” (as learning through doing and empirical observation) and a“passive work” (recording what has been demonstrated) also points to the pattern of per-ceptions about the possible or actual role of writing in learning and knowing.

To enrich students’ understanding of the value and use of writing for learning in science,students will need to be given writing tasks that require them to explore and consolidateunderstandings, and also to reflect on their own learning from writing. While we havereported on some of the theoretical implications of this issue elsewhere (Prain & Hand1996a, 1996b), there is a strong need for future research to focus on the kinds of writingtasks and experiences that will promote students’ enhanced understandings of the meaningand value of writing for learning in science of the kind elaborated in this work. Clearly,there needs to be continuing research into students’ perceptions about their own learning,and learning science, as they engage in these writing tasks. At the same time, furtherresearch is needed into ways to support science teachers in clarifying with their studentsthe role of writing in learning through writing.

REFERENCES

Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1987). The psychology of written composition. Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum.

Berry, J, & Sahlberg, P. (1996). Investigating pupils’ ideas of learning. Learning and Instruction, 6,19–36.

Craig, M., & Yore, L. (1995). Middle school students’ metacognitive knowledge about sciencereading and science text: An interview study. Reading Psychology, 16, 169–215.

Ebenezer, J. V., & Zoller, U. (1993). Grade 10 students’ perception of and attitudes toward scienceteaching and school science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 30, 175–186.

Gunstone, R. (1995). Constructivist learning and the teaching of science. In B. Hand & V. Prain(Eds.), Teaching and learning in science: The constructivist classroom. Sydney: Harcourt Brace.

Hand, B., Treagust, D., & Vance, K. (1997). Student perceptions of the social constructivist class-room. Science Education, 81, 561–576.

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NH: Heinemann.Lederman, N. G., & O’Malley, M. (1990). Students’ perceptions of tentativeness in science: De-

velopment, use, and sources of change. Science Education, 74, 225–239.Novak, J. (1990). Concept maps and vee diagrams: Two metacognitive tools to facilitate meaningful

learning. Instructional Science, 19, 29–52.Prain, V., & Hand, B. (1996a). Writing for learning in the junior secondary science classroom: Issues

arising from a case study. International Journal for Science Education, 18, 117–128.Prain, V., & Hand, B. (1996b). Writing for learning in secondary science: Rethinking practices.

Teaching and Teacher Education, 12, 609–626.Rivard, L.P. (1994). A review of writing to learn in science: Implications for practice and research.

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