JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING VOL. 40, NO. 5, PP. 443–463 (2003)

Social Interaction and the Use of Analogy: An Analysis of Preservice Teachers’Talk during Physics Inquiry Lessons

Randy K. Yerrick,1 Elizabeth Doster,2 Jeffrey S. Nugent,2

Helen M. Parke,2 Frank E. Crawley2

1School of Education, North Education Building #90, San Diego State University,San Diego, California 92182

2East Carolina University, Flanagan Hall, Greenville, North Carolina 22858

Received 6 September 2002; Accepted 22 October 2002

Abstract: Analogies have been argued to be central in the process of establishing conceptual growth,making overt connections and carryover into an intended cognitive domain, and providing a generativevenue for developing conceptual understanding inherent in constructivist learning. However, students’specific uses of analogies for constructing arguments are not well understood. Specifically, the results ofpreservice teachers’ knowledge gains are not widely studied. Although we would hope that engagingpreservice science teachers in exemplary lessons would assist them in using and generating analogies moreexpertly, it is not clear whether or how such curricula would affect their learning or teaching. This studypresents an existence proof of how preservice science teachers used analogies embedded in their coursematerials Physics by Inquiry. This fine-grained analysis of small group discourse revealed three distinctroles of analogies including the development of: (a) cognitive process skills, (b) scientific conceptualunderstanding, and (c) social contexts for problem solving. Results suggest that preservice teachers tend toovergeneralize the analogies inserted by curriculum materials, map irrelevant features of analogies intocollaborative problem solving, and generate personal analogies, which counter scientific concept develop-ment. Although the authors agree with the importance of collaborative problem solving and the insertion ofanalogies for preservice teachers’ conceptual development, we believe much more needs to be understoodbefore teachers can be expected to construct and sustain effective learning environments that rely on usinganalogies expertly. Implications for teacher preparation are also discussed. ! 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.J Res Sci Teach 40: 443–463, 2003

Scientific Arguments in Preservice Teacher Preparation

As science teacher educators we are interested in sharing with our teacher candidatesconstructivist notions of learning and teaching. The construction of knowledge is contingent on

Correspondence to: R.K. Yerrick; E-mail: ryerrick@mail.sdsu.eduDOI 10.1002/tea.10084Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

! 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

the shared values and accepted methods of interaction in a given community. This notion ofknowledge construction is an integral part of the educational and psychological underpinnings ofcurrent reform-based teacher recommendations. Knowledge construction can be characterizedas individual and collective, explicit and tacit, and cognitive and social. Our work has beeninfluenced by the body of research explicating the nature of scientific discourse (Latour &Woolgar, 1986; Lemke, 1990; Traweek, 1988) as well as research that describes classroomdiscourse, teacher beliefs, and interpretations students formulate about teaching and learningbefore their enrollment in university teacher education (Brickhouse & Bodner, 1992; Duschl &Wright, 1989; Hodson, 1993; Lantz & Kass, 1987; Lederman, 1992, 1995; Lortie, 1975). Fromthese two perspectives we propose to help science teacher candidates come to understand certainnorms of scientific discourse (e.g., the formulation of rational argumentation, the use of evidenceand backing), engage them in authentic problem settings (Schon, 1979), and assist students in thepractice of higher-order process skills (Roth, 1993; Roth &Roychoudhury, 1993; Hammer, 1995;Padilla, 1991). By facilitating collaborative problem solving through exemplary curricula we alsoaim to assist prospective teachers in their interpretation of science education reformrecommendations [American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1989;National Research Council (NRC), 1996] that serve to guide future teacher evaluation andresearch.

A large part of scientists’ work is the formulation of arguments and theoretical frameworks.Many researchers have identified key components of these frameworks as emerging throughspecific discourse norms and artifacts shared by the community.

Researchers argue that scientific communities have developed cogent analogies as ways togauge much of their native talk, work, and socialization of new members (Clement, 1989, 1993;Lemke, 1990; Traweek, 1988). Scientists’ use of analogies in their reasoning has been welldocumented (Glynn, Doster, & Law, 1997; Harre, 1961; Hesse, 1966; Nersessian, 1984).However, researchers suggest that content experts such as scientists use analogies, metaphors, andfigures of speech in different ways than do students. One explanation for the discrepancy betweennovice and expert use of analogies is the vast difference in the common ground they share to viewthe world. For example, scientists collectively operate within a community that necessarily mustagree on a connected set of canonical constructs useful for explaining and predicting new events.By contrast, novices communicate in groups using commonsense forms of rationality that areoften typified by a fragmented and disjunct set of immediate principles that may or may not beuseful in describing future events.

Analogies as Intellectual and Social Tools for Sense Making

Recent literature has focused on the use of analogies as a tool for constructing classroomknowledge. Some researchers (Clement, 1988; Glynn, 1994; Schon, 1979) have suggested thatanalogies are useful for helping students make comparisons between personal knowledge andalternative perspectives, whereas others have extended this claim toward a more metacognitiveexamination of the consistency and refinement of personal understanding (Wong, 1993).Researchers have also argued the usefulness of analogies for the various purposes of establishingconceptual growth, providing a generative venue for developing conceptual understandinginherent in constructivist learning (Wong, 1993), and performing a dynamic role in making overtconnections and carryover into an intended cognitive domain (Gentner, 1983; Gick & Holyoak,1983; Wong, 1993).

There has been a concerted effort to write curricula with the intention of immersing studentsinto problem-rich spaces and providing more scientific analogies to guide novices in the

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comparisons of other ways of making sense of available evidence (Camp et al., 1994; McDermottet al., 1996; Steinberg, 1992). Throughout these exemplary curricula, opportunities are wovenfor students to engage in scientific process skills. Science concepts and inserted analogies areobjects of student testing, application, and scrutiny as students formulate hypotheses, designdata collection, identify pertinent variables and interpret, transform, and analyze data—processskills that are promoted by several reform documents (AAAS, 1989, 1993; NRC, 1996).Conceptual change curricula integrate efforts to elicit students’ experiences and prior knowledgeand to engage students in authentic applications of expert representations. Studies confirm thatprocess skills need not be taught as separate entities in as much as higher-order process skillsdevelop in their sophistication among students in a variety of settings (Hammer, 1995; Roth,1993).

There is much uncertainty surrounding effective inquiry teaching. Indeed, the challenge ofcontrolling and orchestrating cognitive growth has been a source of much consternation forcurricula authors. Roth (1993) argued that cognitive skills are not context independent or easilytransferable. Rather, cognitive skills often are bound to the context in which they are developedand practiced. Other researchers have found that guided-inquiry lessons represent cogentactivities and rational scientific arguments; research reveals that students engaging in theseactivities oftenmaintain their own sensemaking for reasons other than rationality (Eichinger et al.,1991; Richmond & Striley, 1996; Roth, 1994, 1995; Vellom, 1993). One weakness the cognitivestudy of analogies has revealed is the limited examination of the social and cognitive uses ofanalogies as separate purposes. The reality of classrooms requires that teachers consider complexgroup interactions, including those in which they are prominent players, to make sense of theiractions as a learner and a teacher.

Purpose of Study

Recognizing that preservice teachers construct their own understanding of science, we soughtto understand how preservice teachers interpreted curricular materials that promoted both explicituse of analogies for understanding physical science and that facilitated practice of process skills ina guided inquiry environment. We explored the use of analogies in naturalistic settings. Given theuncertainty of personal and collective sense making and the ordered, seemingly rigid structure ofsome curricula, we sought to examine the possibilities for how students might use analogies andprocess skills in collaborative problem-solving sessions. In doing so we produced an existenceproof to explicate some of the uses of analogies, knowing that students of this backgroundwill notcompletely embrace nor effectively use analogies in their normal discourse. To this end we asked:How do preservice science teachers use and interpret analogies embedded in collaborative inquiryphysics activities?

Methods

Instruction

Data for the study were gathered in a physical science course for preservice teachers.Classroom structure and interactionswere organized around collaborative group problem solving,journal writing, and guided inquiry. Students commonly worked in groups of 3 or 4 to conductinvestigations, gather evidence, and construct models to help them explain the functioning ofsimple electric circuits involving bulbs, wires, and batteries. The majority of class time was

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devoted to small-group work in which students explored and discussed their own understandingsof scientific concepts with little direct input from the instructor. Traditional instructional strategiessuch as lecturing and teacher-led demonstrations were largely absent from the class interactionsthat we observed. There were, in contrast, a number of whole-class discussions initiated by theinstructor that were concerned with providing a rationale and justification for the class structure.The final component structuring the course, guided inquiry, was influenced by at least threedistinct but connected factors: the programmed course materials that served as the lens to focusstudent inquiry, collaborative group interactions, and both individual and group discussions withthe instructor.

Physics by Inquiry (PBI), the instructional materials for the laboratory-based investigations,were developed by Lillian McDermott and the Physics Education Group (1988) at the Universityof Washington. These materials consisted of a series of carefully designed modules to assiststudents in developing a sound understanding of basic concepts of electricity, as well as thescientific reasoning skills needed to apply these concepts to the everyday world.Working in smallcollaborative groups, students conducted investigations and used their observations as evidencefor constructing explanations andmodels for electric phenomena. The basic design of each sectionbegan with experiments, followed by exercises directly related to and expanding on theexperiments, and finally the resolution of a hypothetical dispute between two students. Intentionalgaps were designed into the modules to encourage students to develop the capacity to apply theconcepts learned in a particular context to a novel situation. Although developing the capacity toapply learned concepts to novel situations is a core notion in the construction of scientificknowledge, this process is not often promoted by traditional science textbooks. However, the factthat a primary feature of PBI is intended to encourage students to apply their knowledge inmultiple settings reveals the reasons for its selection and use.

Data Collection

Three professors and one graduate student served as primary researchers for the study.Researcher roles within the class were varied, although all fell along Patton’s (1990) continuum ofpossible roles for the participant-observer. The graduate student researcher had an additionalappointment as a bona fide member of the class, and as such his role at the study site was largelyparticipatory. We did not attempt to conceal his identity as a researcher: Other members of theclass were informed of his status at the beginning of the semester. The remaining researchersassumedmore detached roles, one as a complete observer and the other as a primary observer whooccasionally participated in small-group discussion.

Primary data sources included nearly 16 hours of videotaped classmeetings of both large- andsmall-group interactions, field notes, student journals, and researcher journals. Data sources weregathered and organized into a research catalog to facilitate data analysis. Student journals and fieldnotes were chronologically correlated to each videotape. A list of general open-ended questionsregarding students’ participation and investigation within the group guided the initial inquiry.These correlations served not only as sequential markers but also as important sources forcomparative analysis of the videotaped episodes. Copies of daily researcher journal entries werealso included in the research catalog. Our data collection was focused on understanding whatsense the group members were making of the activities, what prior knowledge influenced theirthinking, and what reasons they provided for thinking in the ways that they did.

In summary, the research catalog consisted of the videotape index documents, copies ofstudent journal entries for that day, our own notes and comments, and references to the supportingmaterials the students happened to be working with on that particular day.

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Data Analysis

We viewed each video as soon as possible after taping and constructed an initial catalogdocument to index each videotape using a software package called CVideo. The initial tapeviewing involved indexing or tagging real-time markers of the tape towhich we added descriptivetext of the interaction to facilitate later viewing. These documents with tagged times anddescriptive text were constructed for each tape and became the central component of a researchcatalog, whichwasmaintained for each tape. Given the recent focus on understanding how studentargumentation influences learning (Eichinger, 1993; Eichinger & Anderson, 1991; Gil-Perez &Carrascosa-Alis, 1994; Kuhn, 1993), we were especially interested in how the group workedthrough the hypothetical debate sections of the PBI materials and the reasons they provided foragreement or disagreement.

The initial index documents served as an organized record of the data aswell as a research toolto facilitate later viewing and analysis of the tapes. After construction of all the initial documentsfor each tape was complete, the research team returned to the tapes to review each of them forpossible emerging patterns in group interactions and problem-solving strategies. Members of theresearch team analyzed tapes on an individual and group basis with the team meeting fordiscussion at least once a week. Data analysis continued for several months. From the originalindex documents we constructed a primary analysis of each tape that included more in-depthdescriptions of group interactions as well as partial transcriptions of student dialogues. Thecollection of each analysis document then combined to form a more focused picture of the videodata. The complete dialogue from these portions were transcribed verbatim for further analysis.During the secondary analysis of the data, the collection of key classroom episodes were reviewedagain for the purposes of identifying detailed patterns and for comparative analysis of problem-solving strategies and group interactions. Emergent patterns and themes from the primary analysisserved as a guiding framework for the secondary analysis of data. The construction and reflectionentries provided researchers with critical insight into how the students were making sense of thelearning tasks.

In subsequent sections, we provide verbatim transcripts and the researchers’ analysis of datavignettes. Through the analysis of the discussions that occurred within the key collaborativegroup, our main concerns are to reveal the tacit ways in which talking science (Gallas, 1995)developed within the group and to consider how group members supported the learning thatoccurred.

Results

Our results focus on the interplay of three aspects that shape the use of analogies in solvingscientific problems in collaborative groups: (a) the role of analogies in learners’ conceptualunderstandings of learners, (b) the inquiry processes supported and confounded by students’ use ofanalogies, and (c) the social fabric of collaborative settings and its effect on personal and scientificanalogies. Each of these were found to be brought to the problem-solving foreground at differentjunctures, and at times it was difficult to determinewhich of these three aspects was ultimately thedriving force behind the constructed meaning of the learning tasks. The use of analogies incollaborative work often shaped the students’ individual and collective interpretation of theinstructional intent of PBI, discussion of available evidence gathered from PBI activities,tangential experimentation unintended by the PBI text, and, subsequently, the negotiated nextcourse of action as students worked through their activities. Our goal is to provide an existenceproof for the flexible and nonrational approaches that students employwith exemplary curricula in

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collaborative problem-solving settings. We report in the following sections attributes that bestdefine the use of analogies of students we observed: (a) students’ opportunity to challenge beliefsthrough the use of analogies, (b) students’ overgeneralization of analogies inserted by curricularmaterials, (c) students’ mapping irrelevant features onto analogies, and (d) students’ generation ofpersonal theories elevated to the role of analogy and employed for a variety of purposes.

The excerpts from classroom dialogue we report stand in sharp contrast to traditionallystructured classroom discourse patterns. For the most part, student discussions took place withlimited direction and input from the instructor. Whenever possible, we use a chronological reportof these excerpts so that the reader may have a better sense of the evolving nature ofexperimentation and social interactions as we recorded this small group working together for 6weeks (18 hours) of instruction.

Assertion 1: Curricular Insertion of Analogy Provided Challenges for Personal Beliefsand an Authentic Backdrop for Practicing Inquiry Process Skills

The insertion of appropriate analogies for limiting ambiguity and addressing naiveinterpretations of evidence is a common theme of many research-driven curricular documents.Analogies serve a primary function in promoting conceptual development of core scientific ideasaswell as promoting the practice of process skills representative of scientific activity. In our resultsthemost efficient student use of analogieswas the curricular insertion of an appropriate analogy ormodel for the purpose of focusing student learning. Such activities are carefully structured toinvolve students in gathering discrepant data, present students with appropriate analogies thatcontrast commonsense understandings, and facilitate students’ functional use of these analogiesby explaining and predicting future events using the analogies. The PBI text asks

Does the observation suggest that the flow in an electric circuit is one way (e.g., from thebattery to the bulb) or round trip (e.g., from the battery to bulb and back again through thebattery)? Explain.

What does your answer above suggest is a major difference between the flow in an electriccircuit and the flow of water in a river? (McDermott, 1996, pp. 390)

In the following excerpts, students who had been studying electricity were asked to explainwhether electricity flows in one or two directions within the circuit. The curricular insertion of theanalogy of river flow promoted the engagement in fundamental processes of scientific inquiry.Having completed part of their investigations, students began negotiating what counted asevidence, debating multiple points of view, and constructing models to explain scientificphenomena related to simple electric circuits. For example, students were jointly deciding whatkinds of common experiences can be used to talk about flow and how relevant each of the pieces ofevidence are to the problem at hand.

Chris: [Reading aloud] In what way does the flow of electric current differ from the waterin the river? [To the group] Is it the actual electron moving? Is it the areas ofimpulse moving?

Mike: I think the river is completely different.Curt: Yeah, I do, too.Mike: I think it might be compared to maybe a wave in the ocean or something. Where a

wave is different water and it isn’t the same water stretched across the ocean orsomething. I think that is a better analogy there.

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Chris: That’s a good point. That’s kind of what I was saying. Are they looking at a riverlike from Point A to Point B and only the difference would be the mass? Or are theylooking at an electron going from . . . //

Mike: That’s what it sounds like to me. They’re wanting us to say there is one electronmoving here. Now is that what you get from that question?

Jeff: Yeah, I think they’re linking up that idea, but I am trying to follow the first questionabout whether it is asking about one way and a river that goes around. Or is it abouta river flows out into a lake and stops and then goes back into the river again?That’s how I am understanding the question.

Chris: Hmmm.Chris: So if you compared it that way, then you’re not thinking that they’re similar in any

way. Because when the river flows on, it doesn’t return to the source except in theevaporation phase. Where electrons flow atom per atom, add an electron movingdown a path. They may be similar in that manner. I think that you’re right [Mike]. Ithink they’re talking about a river that goes one way.

Mike: I don’t understand this one-way thing. I think that they’re trying to get us . . . //Chris: The concept let’s say the water flows one way. Let’s say that what he says istrue, the water flows down over a waterfall and returns back to its source. I thinkthat . . . //

Mike: Is that the way it is?Chris: I think that is the concept they are looking for here and we have to say, ‘‘No, it’s

not.’’ The water goes on and on and on and it runs into the ocean and the ocean runsinto something else and the only way we get it back is through a different system.

Mike: Why is it dissimilar? Is it because it’s evaporating . . . ?

It is clear students are using a curriculum-generated analogy and not a personal analogy asstudents refer to the author’s intended use in the third-person ‘‘they’’ (10, 24, 26). At this stage inthe investigation students are interpreting the intentions of the author and actively negotiating themeaning of the author’s voice and purpose. The questions raised about the use of the insertedanalogy are in part an exercise in exploring the social parameters of the text and manipulativesstudentswere given.After all, in theirminds, students are actingwithin a social context of learningphysics in a university classroom rich with meaning and hidden curricula implied in gradingprocedures and correct answers. Questions like these are anticipated because inquiry-basedapproaches are not common experiences for preservice elementary science teachers. Prospectiveelementary science teachers are not encouraged or regularly provided with opportunities topractice science in ways that promote experimental design, hypothesis generation, or individualinterpretation, and these students believed it was important that they accurately interpret the textand their task within this social context. Mike’s and Jeff’s challenges serve to clarify the group’scontextual use of the analogy (5, 8, 16–18) and to help to bound the appropriateness of the group’suse with the intentions of the author and the usefulness of the analogy in synthesizing availableevidence.

In addition to the general inquiry processes implicit in this PBI task and the evolving socialcontext, the analogy promoted the insertion of students’ prior experience. The inserted analogyprovided a venue for inserting individual conceptions offlow for bothwater and electricity. Duringthe process of interpretation students made their conceptual understanding more explicit to oneanother through a range of experiences and personal constructions activated by the insertedanalogy. Analysis of student arguments revealed several conceptions of current flow, including

! current as a river flowing in one direction! current as conserved as in the case of the water cycle conserving energy and Mikeer

SOCIAL INTERACTION AND USE OF ANALOGY 449

! current driven by forces represented as waterfalls and flowing rivers! current as an impulse wave phenomenon versus individual charge migration! current altered by the shape of the conduit as in the case of a hose and water pressure, and! current represented by charges traveling on highways (both one-way and divided

highways).

These personal constructions arose spontaneously from arguments concerning both the com-monly observed phenomena as well as the intention of the curricula. Student contributions freelymoved from discussions of how the electrical charge migrated in the wire to discussions of whatthe author expected students to know at their stage of the activities. Flipping forward andbackward through the curricula and making comments such as ‘‘So what do we write in thisspace?’’ revealed a complex, nonlinear kind of discourse in which students continually juggledconceptual versus contextual parameters.

The small-group collaborations generated many interpretations and provided a venue fornegotiating ways of deciding what counts. However, not all ideas hold equal predictive power inscience. Therein lies a tension for having students generate from their own personal knowledgeand observation to arrive at the intended goal conception. Coupled with the PBI goal of solicitingcontrary private beliefs is the confrontation of less useful ideas through data collection and theorydevelopment. During one of the small-group interactions Chris led many rounds of brief debatessurrounding the actual motion of electrons in comparison to river water motion. After allmembers’ personal interpretations had been voiced, the group appeared to agree on a use of theanalogy that was not only compatible with the author’s use, but brought them to the desiredoutcome of concluding that a circuit is a round trip flow of charge.

Mike: What is a round trip, anyway? I don’t understand. Is it . . .Jeff: Right. So is the flow of the river similar or dissimilar to the flow of the circuit?

Frank: Right cause if you say it’s one way then you say that the battery is . . .Chris: You’re saying it goes off in the distance and it never goes back to the battery. That’s

what we’re saying in essence.Jeff: That would be a one-way flow.

Chris: Yes one way. A round trip would be it goes out into the circuit and comes . . . //Frank: I don’t think . . .Chris: // . . . back to the battery.Frank: I don’t think that they’re talking about groundwater and that sort of thing. With

precipitation and the water cycle and the river flowing and that sort of thing.Chris: No I think they’re probably . . . it goes on forever [pause] . . .Unless indeed we’re

talking does it mean it takes kind of like what we we’re taking about [Mike]physically, like we’re talking about an atom or electron moving down a line.

Jeff: Is it a round trip? Is that what you guys are arguing for?Mike: Is it an electric circuit?Jeff: Yeah. Electric.

Mike: I think so.Frank: I think it’s one way, but it’s meeting one way [gestures hands from both ends of the

battery meeting in the middle at the bulb].Jeff: I think where you get to Section 2.3 where the students are where they’re arguing

about that . . . .We’re asked to resolve the dispute between two students, I thinkthat’s the place where we resolve the point that we’re at right now.

The power of a single analogy for becoming a conduit for generating student discussion isevident in this interaction despite the accurateness of students’ prior beliefs. There is one

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exception to this group consensus during the use of the flow analogy. Frank harbored whatresearchers (Osborne&Freyberg, 1985; Ball,McDiarmid, &Anderson, 1989;McDermott, 1996)clearly documented as a common naive conception about the flow of electrical charge and theproduction of light. Frank supported the position that flow is unidirectional, but through hisobjections and hand gestures (57–59) revealed that he believed that charges flow fromboth ends ofthe battery and meet at the bulb to produce light.

The PBI authors were well aware of this reasoning and thoughtfully built experiences intosubsequent activities to challenge students’ notions. The group members continued to synthesizepast activities and discussions to bolster their claim that electrical charge did in fact circulate in around trip, one-way path of flow out one end of the battery, through the bulb and back to the otherend of the battery. Only Frank appeared tomaintain an alternative belief about the flow, concedingthat flow was one way but from both ends of the battery. Although there is little direct evidenceavailable to contradict Frank’s interpretation, conservation laws and the usefulness of otherinterpretations are intended to replace Frank’s view. However, in the interest of the emotionalcomfort of the group, the intention of the curriculum was subverted for a more consensualyet artificial agreement. Jeff attempted make the activity go more smoothly but at the sametime missed the opportunity to confront the naive notion that current flows from both ends of thebattery.

It is evident that the social context of the group compromised the intended opportunity tocritically examine Frank’s naive conception of the flow analogy as well as other personalconstructions. In some ways Frank was allowed to believe he was correct in that his groupmembers chose to postpone or squelch argument selectively. Without an expert to draw attentionto imperative nuances in inquiry processes, scaffold alternative discourse, and redirect studentefforts, students will negotiate their own uses of curricula for their shared purposes. Theseexamples represent a challenge to curricula writers aiming for a singular conceptual outcome.Some authors have even argued that inappropriate usage of analogies does more harm than goodandmay even lead students to formulate somewhat complexmisconceptions (Duit, 1991; Gilbert,1989; Thagard, 1992). When students engage in unsupervised use of analogies in logicalreasoning, the danger of forming misconceptions arises as ideas are overgeneralized andconnections are drawn among noncorresponding features of the concepts (Glynn, 1994).

Assertion 2: Students’ Engagement in Curricula Separate fromTheir Instructor’s Guidance Allowed Opportunities to Adapt Analogies Incorrectlyand Subvert Synthesis and Disagreement during Collaborative Work

Students used the analogies presented inPBI in a variety ofways and for a variety of purposes.Inserted analogies such as flow were instrumental in expanding students’ process skill expertise.Routinely students would engage in a cycle of posing hypotheses, designing data collectionprocedures, and discussing their individual interpretations while inserting and reevaluating theiruse of analogies such as flow.Less timewas spent daily in reading and interpreting instructions andmore time was spent on performing generating experiments—some of which lay outside of theintended focus of PBI—evidence of the level of engagement and student interest generated by theinquiry setting.

Despite the provision of focus for problem solving and data synthesis, analogies oftenprovided students with opportunities to distort the intention of the inserted analogies. Thisoccurred in at least two different ways: (a) Students transferred other features onto analogy thatrendered it inappropriate to the desired concept, and (b) students overgeneralized the use ofanalogies. These deviations from the intended use of analogies were primarily observed when the

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group was functioning in small collaborative (4 members) and not whole-class discussionsfollowing the hypotheses generation and data collection surrounding their investigations withelectrical circuits.

During several small-group discussions analogies that had been inserted in prior lessonswould reemerge and spiral into a host of other kinds of representations of the initial, moresimplified analogy. The role of the analogy in group discussion served as an aggregating point for avariety of personal experiences, only some of which maintained the conceptual integrity of theinquiry. For example, while investigating the heat of the wire and resistors at different points ofthe circuit, students were asked to debate the notion of conservation of current and the origin of theheat and light energy observed leaving the circuit. In just a few short minutes the students wentfrom introducing the original flow analogy to adding the features ofwater speed, conduit diameter,and direction of charges. Although these are important attributes, their introduction launched thegroup into comparisons of automobiles as charges, fumes or emissions as light, and bloodconverting food to energy. In their fervor to assimilate experiences and observations into newschema, students often added features to analogies that promoted misconceptions. The freedomto adapt analogies to personally significant events often led to misuse of the analogy and thepromotion of misconceptions in unrelated content areas (e.g., blood flow does not convert foodinto energy). Instead of analogies serving continually to refine and converge experiences withcanonical scientific knowledge, analogies were just as likely to result in discussion ofmisconceptions than expert conceptions as students found it important, even necessary, to insertother ways of speaking about current that the lesson structure did not supply.

Another example of misuse of the intended analogy was seen in students’ tendencies toovergeneralize the usefulness and appropriateness for interpreting experiments. Analogiessupplied a necessary framework for conceptual development for co-constructing commonunderstanding of rather complex scientific representations. The utility of the flow analogy requiresthe juxtaposition of opposing models against the synthesis of data—data that have impliedsignificance and do not supply direct proof or refutation of hypotheses. In the following excerpt,Frank attempted to promote his naive model for the third time, arguing current flowed from bothends of the battery. The focus of the intended task was to use the heat given off by the wire asevidence of what current is and how it flowed within the wire. Frank’s notion is a commonly heldnaive conception that PBI curricular authors anticipated—hence their inclusion of structuredinvestigations of the wire’s induced magnetic fields, conservation of the wire’s mass and charge,and polarity of devices in circuits. Instead of debating Frank’s conception using any of these ideasor data, the group sidestepped Frank’s contribution yet another time through Chris’s over-generalizing flow as through a garden hose to explain why the wire heated up.

Frank: It’s about like a highway; everybody is going to start at one place but some peopleare going to get off at the exits . . . at the light bulb you’ll lose some, you lose somethrough the heat of the bulb, you lose some through the heat of the wire, youlose some through the heat of the battery . . . but eventually some of it gets aroundto the end . . . I’m not sure how it completes the circuit . . . so the other stuff can getback out the other end.

Mike: I think it compares to like a wave in the ocean because a wave is different waterstretching across the ocean, I think that’s a little better analogy there.

Jeff: So is it a round trip?Mike: I think so.Frank: I say it’s one way but that it’s meeting in the middle that causes the electric[ity].

The positive and the negative are meeting and that forms the electricity.

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Mike: So you’re saying that something is traveling this way and at the same timesomething is coming out here traveling this way and then they meet? So there is noreturn . . . it’s one-way?

Frank: No return at all.Curt: What would happen if I assumed I had a pump here, not a battery a pump; I had a

hose and connected the hose together, and right here I put some sort of spinningwheel . . .maybe because the element here has got more resistance . . . that’s thereason it’s getting hot because it slowed something down . . . but let’s say forinstance I put a spinning wheel in the middle. Is that water not going to come backhere to be pumped? And doesn’t the system cause it to have the same pressure evenafter the middle?

Mike: You think it has the same pressure here after it’s turned the wheel?Curt: Yeah, because of the size of the tube, and I’m looking at the battery as a water

pump it provides the force it needs to shoot that thing out through the system.Mike: So the energy coming through this wire is the same as energy coming through this

wire?Chris: Just slower because these two restricters are slowing it down.Mike: I understand what you’re saying; I’m just having trouble comprehending it. I just

have this picture of the flow of current as being the power source.Chris: Compare this to a highway: Nobody can enter or exit; you come in one side you got

to go out the other side. The lights may slow them down, but they stay on thehighway.

Mike: But something is leaving that highway in the form of light energy you know . . .Chris: We’re calling it something else; in this case let’s call the cars current . . .

[Discussion continued for 10 minutes as Frank watched silently.]

Frank inserted his personal highway model as another equally valid tool for explainingavailable evidence connecting current flow and the ways that cars travel on a highway (74–80).Frank clarified to others that his notion of positive/negative charge flow complemented hishighway analogy. It seemed reasonable to Frank that adding opposite charges will somehowproduce the energy seen as light emerging from the filament. Frank’s conception contrasted theintended concept accepted by the other group members that moving negative charges lose theirkinetic energy as it is transformed into light and heat by the filament. The group members,however, did not capitalize on the opportunity to contrast these conceptions but instead avoideddebating Frank’s conception although the highwaymodel of flow in two directions supported bothmodels in the creation of light in a circuit.

How could the authentic engagement in inquiry process skills and solicitation of conflictingconceptions be subverted and not result in PBI’s intended debate? Our answer was foundrepeatedly in the social dynamics of the group. Many researchers studied the members’ roles incollaborative problem solving (Eichenger, 1993; Vellom, Anderson, & Palincsar, 1993; Roth,1995) and found that agendas within the group superceded intentions of curricular tasks. In thecase of our 4-member collaborativegroup, progress through the tasks ofPBIwas perceived as slowby group members because they often encountered impasses to consensus. Such impasses wereoften precipitated by social agendas at work within the group rather than the nature of thediscrepant data or concepts themselves. For example, Chris, a dominant member, often controlledthe direction of discussions toward his own unique synthesis. Chris, an older student who enteredinto the teaching ranks laterally, was a talkative and charismatic student able to lobby support forhis ideas for reasons other than their rationality. Sometimes Chris would overgeneralize theintended meaning of analogies to demonstrate his mastery or to avoid criticism of his own

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adaptations. One of the tactics Chris invoked was the extrapolation of a single analogy forgeneralizing common experiences hewanted to promote. Chris repeatedly demonstrated his savvyinmaintaining the focus on his own conceptions, sometimes even inserting incorrect but scientific-sounding explanations like Bernoulli’s principle and Newton’s laws.

The fallout of one or two individuals’ control over group discussion topicswasmost evident instudent journals’ daily reflections on the learning experience. Frank demonstrated in his journalthe differences between outer compliance and inner appropriation of the tasks. Frank did not favorworking in this group though two of his partners evaluated learning in this way positively. In partFrank’s reservations were attributed to the uncertainty of the task and partly because of theexclusion of his own ideas. In his daily journal Frank reflected on the difficulties of being asked toconstruct knowledge that he thoughtwas better to receivefirst. Frank also extended his frustrationsinto predictions of the usefulness of these inquiry investigations in his plans for future teaching.

I am ready to suspend the problem because I am tired of talking about it. I don’t think it isthat big of a deal. As far as real-life experience, as long as the light works and turns on, I’mhappy . . .We seem to go off on tangents on specific experiments . . . I won’t do this with myown students. We don’t even know what the words mean. We’re struggling just to get thatfirst . . . It’s hard for me. I wouldn’t use the same approach with my students because I feellike we need some background knowledge before we jump into it and we don’t have it. Idon’t remember doing it in elementary school and I feel like an elementary studentlearning this for the first time myself.

Clearly Frank perceivedworking through personal and collective sense making in this way astoo frustrating and uncertain. Frank never acquired the means to generate tests for emerging ideasor influence his group’s means to prove or promote different conceptions. Further analysis ofFrank’s journal revealed that he held traditional views of teaching and how children learn. Frankhad come to expect that his teachers would regularly disseminate answers coupled with positivereinforcement for recitation of laws and observable facts. Frank also thought that it was wrong andharmful to allow students to define unpredictable paths of inquiry—designing their own tests foremerging questions—or to flounder in speculation without immediate closure.

After this third exclusion of his idea, Frank chose simply not to engage in subsequentdiscussions for several class meetings, deliberately weighing his contributions. Several haveargued that teachers’ beliefs drive their interpretations of learning experiences and Frank’s case isfurther proof that preservice majors’ experiences are profoundly influenced by beliefs they bringto teacher education courses and that Lortie’s (1975) socialization process occurs in teachersduring their K–12 experiences as students. If preservice candidates believe that science is a set offacts to be acquired through traditional or hands-onmethods, theywill likely rate the experience ofinquiry promoted bymaterials such asPBI as not useful for promoting understanding, and perhapseven harmful in their preparation as teachers.

Assertion 3: Students’ Personal Theories Often Functioned as Analogies Given Equalor Greater Weight to Inserted Analogies during Collaborative Inquiry

Over the course of data collection, small groups were observed to engage in design andanalysis tasks longer andmore expertly used process skills to resolve interpretive discrepancies aswell as problem generation. Our findings coincide with those of other researchers (Roth, 1993,1994) that the learning curve for participation in collaborative inquiry settings is initially steep butresults in fundamental shifts in the rules of group discourse and the tasks they design and engage

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in. However, their demonstrated increased proficiency and resultant confidence sometimes ledthem to insert their own personal theories in place of those offered by the curriculum. Wedistinguish the insertion of a personal analogy from the use of intended analogies on the basis ofthe explicit connection to present or past curricular artifacts. We also discriminate between theinsertion of personal experience versus the insertion of personal theories by the explanatory powerassociated with its use. In short, if a student introduces an event or model intended to synthesizeobserved data or promote a revised, cogent explanation that has not been introduced by thecurricula, he or she has introduced a personal theory. The following excerpt demarcates each byway of example.

Curt: Right here for some reason they are at maximum . . . letting off all their energybecause of the restriction and speed and at this section here they have lost theirenergy.

Jeff: Where did you get that idea from?Curt: Spaceships. Spaceships when they hit their highest resistance they start glowing.Jeff: Okay, now what’s going fast?Curt: The electrons.Mike: Its heating at different speeds at different places for some reason I don’t

know . . .when it gets out here it gets to pick up speed or energy until it gets to thispoint where the air then maybe absorbs the heat and it cools until it gets to thenegative terminal.

Curt: Its just like a kid in the front yard; you got a gate and it’s gonna slow him downuntil he opens it . . . if you put a light bulb in there that’s the gate which slows downthings and meters them. They have to come through at a certain rate . . . they aresqueezed through that resistance, but if I shut this it’s just like opening the gate; thekid can run continuously right straight out.

In this examplewe observe both the insertion of personal experience and theory. Students areengaged in analyzing temperature data they have collected from different positions in a complexcircuit. The PBI activity has directed students to use the curricular flow analogy for interpretingvaried phenomena to generate potential explanations for the heated wires. Chris inserted hisgeneral knowledge of how spaceships heat upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, likening it toelectron’s speed and the heat released from the wire (101). Chris defined not only the variables oftemperature and current but also encouraged the group tomake causal explanations for differentialheating of the wire. Two other group members demonstrated their acquired sagacity and refinedprocess skills by demanding clarity of the proposed explanation (103) and by using Chris’scontribution to propose a new hypothesis (107).

The phenomenon of spaceship heating was different from the insertion of personal theorysuch as the analogy of children passing through a gate in that it incorporated comments from hisgroup and promoted an overarching theory for the altered electrons’ speed and resistance ofelectron movement in the wire. Chris’s gate analogy shared many attributes with prior PBI tasksandwas consistent for connecting direct evidence to scientific explanations—although transcriptsand other artifacts did not reveal its origins in the curricula. The gate analogy was an attempt toexplain the observed heat as the result of speeding electrons giving off energy, slowing them downto an appreciable lowered reading on the thermometer. It was so compelling that it served as aguiding precept in two subsequent investigations. Chris and Mike noticed that wires heated up incertain parts of circuits and not others. Although the text directed students to compare complexnetworks and later Kirchhoff’s rule, this group departed from the PBI text to investigate theirown hypothesis, left the lab to find thermometers, and designed experiments to measure the

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temperature of the wire at each junction. Students tried to prove their hypothesis using indirectevidence—reading temperature and connecting it to the abrupt decrease in speed of electrons—tomake sense of what they had observed.

The insertion of a personal theory resulted in the promotion of certain desirable process skillsincluding the group’s ability to formulate hypotheses, plan and design experiments, and interpretdata (AAAS, 1989). There were, however, consequences resulting from the unbridled use ofpersonal analogies, including overlooking contradictory evidence, drawing incorrect conclusions,and creating increased stress and uncertainty among group members. Mike and Chris designedtheir circuit temperature around the assumption that the gate analogy was wholly accurate andsubstantiated by differential heating of wires. To the group’s dismay, their results were con-founding. In their initial tests, data confirmed their hypothesis for differential heating of the singlewire circuit. After a second run of the experiment, different results were obtained; all threethermometers attached to the wire maintained equal readings. Two subsequent rounds of datacollection of experimental results were discrepant; all three thermometers attached to the wiremaintained equal readings. These unexpectedly contradictory data raised doubts and additionalquestions for the group, engaging members in debate in which they reconsidered their priorconsensus regarding their personal theories. Uncertain about how to proceed, the group inventedthe idea that larger wires havemore resistance and smaller wires help chargesmove faster throughthe wire. Instead of questioning the accuracy of the gate analogy, they discarded their non-conforming data and generated an explanation adopted as a rule that ‘‘larger wiresmust offermoreresistance than smaller wires.’’

Wewere troubled by the group’s ability to retain the gate analogy as valid despite the availableevidence to refute it or limit its explanatory power. It appeared that the unabated usage of personaltheories as analogies allowed students to create reality rather than observe or measure it. Weinvestigated the origin and authority of this personal theory by examining student journals anddiscussion transcripts. Mike believed that the larger area of thewire allowed it to hold and equallydistribute more heat, whereas Curt believed ‘‘the larger wire could hold more of the electricity’’being sent through it by the battery. Both of these personal beliefs functioned to maintain theoriginal explanations for unequal heating of the wire promoted by the gate analogy. The problemof discrepant data from the uniform temperature of thewire became a question of how the gauge ofthewire affects its temperature. However, scientists do not believe that electrons move at differentrates in different parts of simple circuit wires, that electrons come slamming to a stop at the firstresistor, or that air cools circuit wires differentially toward the negative end of the battery, asstudents suggested. Though inaccurate, none of these explanations was refuted publicly amonggroup members. Rather, they were used to retain the personal theory as an appropriate analogythough they contradicted McDermott’s intended conceptual outcomes for students.

Part of the social context that added to the bias of their experimentation was differentinterpretations of the group task. We argue that the instructional context and students’ beliefsabout learning influence the acceptance of personal theories as analogies. In part personal theoriesoffer resolution to conflict, a kind of balm for uncomfortable debate and disagreement. In part,personal theories also bound the problem and often divide it up into recognizable and manageableparts. The following excerpt once again demonstrates the strong influence of social norms on thetexture of arguments involving analogies as students subverted the most well-intended inquirycurricula.

Chris: I proved that both of them were the same brightness . . .Frank: I think current is used up . . . Some of it is anyway.Chris: Well, at one point I thought the same thing but I proved that the current was the

same throughout that wire; then it can’t be used up.

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Frank: But you’re losing some to heat energy in that.Chris: That’s what I was thinking at first too, but we came to the consensus . . .Frank: If it wasn’t used up then the battery would never die.Chris: The battery is not used up just the only thing is its ability to produce chemically . . .Mike: Yeah, it gives it the chemical charge because that gets used up.Chris: Well, it won’t produce any more electrons so the pump has stopped.Frank: But ya see? Do we have to come to the same opinion?Chris: No. Frank: Because this is where we get behind I mean . . .whatever.Jeff: So what are you saying Frank? . . .What is your point again?

Frank: As far as electricity or moving on in the group?Chris: No, but you’ve got a good point because in asking that I’m starting to: think . . .No,

I don’t have to agree; it’s good not to agree. But if we don’t agree somewhere oneof us is gonna go into the next step with the wrong analogy . . .Then we’ve got oldbaggage; you’ve got to unlearn all those things and it’s harder to unlearn it.

Although the discussion began as an examination of a personal theory about the consumptionof charge in a battery, the debate was quickly stifled as Frank announced his discomfort of havingto reach consensus. Students adopted personal theories as analogies to end the arduous task ofreaching consensuswithin a collaborative group because they believed theywere getting behind intheir work relative to the rest of the class. Clearly there existed a range of interpretations within thegroup for what constitutes scientific knowledge, how it is acquired by students, and the role ofinquiry tasks in learning such knowledge. Students’ references to unlearning content, obtainingonly correct answers, and negotiating when and how consensus was reached demonstrate thechallenge of establishing norms of discourse within a small group—norms that shape the wayanalogies are used and are essential to a positive and successful learning experience whileimparting profoundly different dispositions for learning science.

In our attempts to reconstruct students’ interpretations of tasks and their use of analogies incollaborative contexts, we encountered reflections that did not always represent positive inquiryexperiences. Through interviews we explored students’ value of personal learning experience,their conflicts they were experiencing between their personal beliefs about teaching and learningtheir current tasks, and their plans for teaching their own students with such a model forcollaborative inquiry. These results were synthesized with journal entries, student commentary,and group transcripts to reveal a wide range of interpretations within this one small group. Therange of perspectives and beliefs that students harbored while engaging in the PBI tasksreveals the difficulty of establishing acceptable norms within a small group with strong historiesof what it means to do and know science in university classrooms. When group members donot agree on the value of inquiry learning for themselves or their future students, it is unlikelythey will engage similarly or all attain similar expertise in conceptual understanding, use ofprocess skills, or desired social skills and dispositions associated with current views of scientificliteracy.

Conclusions

Our analysis of collaborative problem solving using PBI materials revealed that analogiesplayed a vital role in the individual and collective construction of scientific knowledge.Specifically, students were observed to use electric circuit analogies for introducing and debatingprior knowledge and experience, increasing authentic engagement in problem solving, promotinghigher-order process skills, and negotiating a social climate necessary for substantive scientificdiscourse. We concluded from the analysis of the evolving dialogue, interviews, artifacts

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collected, and student journals that analogies played a highly personalized role in developing richdescriptions about electrical phenomena and related scientific conceptions.

Analogies also played a central role in the joint construction of that knowledge. As in the caseof PBI’s river flow analogy and Chris’s gate analogy, they gave voice and substance to privateknowledge and experience, acting like a handle onto which each member could grasp the publicideas and evidence and pass them on to other members. Analogies gave students opportunities totest hypotheses related to current flow and practice other higher-order process skills central toreform rhetoric as documented by other researchers. Students’ proficiency increased in (a)identifying and defining pertinent variables, (b) interpreting and analyzing data, (c) planning anddesigning experiments, and (d) formulating hypotheses. As demonstrated in the group’sinvestigation of heat released from the circuit’s resistors, students not only engaged in hypothesistesting and data analysis, the analogies and subsequent personal theories extended their processskills to actually formulating new hypotheses and designing data collection to test theirhypotheses. The frequent use of analogies was most likely influenced by PBI’s inherent studentaccountability to complete investigations, decide what counted as evidence, debate multiplepoints of view, and construct models to explain scientific phenomena related to simple electriccircuits.

Analogies served as a both tools for sense making as well as a backdrop for interpretingstudents’ use of larger conceptual frameworks. Students used analogies for interpreting observedevidence at the same time analogies and assisted them in talking about phenomena in away whichmembers found inviting. However, group members took certain liberties in their appropriation ofanalogies inserted by the curricula. Group members overgeneralized the validity of analogies incertain problem contexts. Students alsomapped inappropriate properties onto the given analogies.For example, students extrapolated from the highway model the notion that light energy acts likefumes from cars and that the corresponding energy was produced in similar ways. An unfortunatefeature of this particular group’s social context was that many of these misapplications ofanalogies went unchecked because the group avoided most direct confrontations.

Not only did group members demonstrate a strong tendency to overgeneralize analogies andmap irrelevant features from the analogy to the target concept, they also engaged in the generationof their own analogies that emerged first as personal theories,many ofwhichwere poor conceptualmatches for the target concept. David Wong (1993) suggested the value and importance ofstudents’ constructing their own understandings for scientific phenomena. He identified self-generated analogies as playing a significant role in the development of new understandings notonly in classrooms, but also in scientific communities. Self-generated analogies serve tomake newsituations familiar while also encouraging the development ofmultiple explanations as opposed tothe strict pursuit of a single correct answer. However, sometimes self-generated analogies weretreated with equal or greater authority than the intended analogy, which often resulted in harboredmisconceptions about the scientific phenomena they investigated. Although this type ofinteraction is arguably characteristic of the scientific endeavor, during the course of the study therepeated and frequent formation of misconceptions resulted in a notable degree of frustration andanxiety for the students. Our study suggests that when students are working collaboratively withguided inquiry materials, frequent questions and guidance from the instructor may be effective inaverting many of these extended conceptual detours.

Finally, we observed an interplay between social and intellectual uses of analogies indiscourse settings, an interaction that sometimes resulted in subverting the intentions of the PBIcurricula. Student motives that rarely came to the surface during collaborative problem solvingwould bring untimely closure to debates and sometimes the merging of dichotomousinterpretations for the sake of comfort or efficiency. Throughout the processes of experimental

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design, data collection, interpretation, and hypothesis testing, the collaborative process wasinfluenced by many factors. Students found themselves at unforeseen impasses, most likelybecause of the novelty of this context, and sometimes chose to ignore discrepant data or recast theirsolutions in problematic ways. Although spaceships and backyard gates have personal appeal andallow students to develop an initial understanding of the phenomena observed, they do not have thetested generalizability to related events that scientific analogies have the power to explain. Unlikecanonical scientific explanations, which are usually concise, eloquent, and consistent in their use,explanations and the use of analogies and personal theories fostered by collaborative settingswereused interchangeably in a variety of settings despite their inappropriateness

Implications

It has become increasingly popular to suggest that students should be provided with moreclassroom opportunities to engage in constructing their own understandings of and telling theirown stories about scientific phenomena. Although this increased focus on talking scienceundoubtedly offers tremendous potential for sustained practice of critically reasoned discourse,descriptive accounts of preservice science teachers engaged in such educational settings have beenslow to emerge. The inquiry-based PBI curriculum materials offered an excellent venue forinvestigating this phenomenon. This study contributes toward the generation of further discussionabout the ways that preservice science educators make sense of scientific phenomena in settingsthat bring into question commonly held perspectives on teaching and learning.

Making a personal connection to scientific concepts appeared to crucially support the learningthat occurred in this group. Mike, Chris, and Frank seemed to send a message that the learning ofabstract scientific concepts such as electric current needs to be understood within the context ofstudents’ own highly personalized ways of making sense. The process of joining new knowledgeto existing knowledge is intrinsically motivating, and analogies play an important role in formingthis type of conceptual bridge (Glynn, 1994). In our collaborative group setting, analogies wereimportant for several reasons: They emerged from the learners’ own prior knowledge, they helpedto frame problems based on the learners’ perception of the situation, and they allowed the learnersto confront and reshape their own representations with little direction from the teacher. These areall important components that can, in our view, contribute to the development of a scientificallyliterate citizenry.

Although we support the inquiry-based instructional philosophy of the PBImaterials and theactivities and interactions that transpired in the classroom, many of students’ personal analogiesand explanations were unsuccessful at leading them to scientifically accepted ideas about theconcepts they investigated. In addition, given the highly personalized nature of meaning makingthat was developed in the cooperative group, we find a dilemma concerning how to engage ourstudents in scientific discoursewhile also supporting their ownhighly personal and socioculturallymediatedways of knowing. Complex problems can emergewhen students are brought into contactwith the discourse practices of science inways that contradict their own personal ways of knowing(Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Delpit, 1988; LeCompte & McLaughlin, 1994).We questionwhat it means to privilege the technical rationality of science in favor of other varyingnormative discourses that govern action and belief. How can learners be supported in their ownways of knowingwhile simultaneously developing newways of reasoning, speaking, valuing, andacting? We think that the account of learning portrayed here has demonstrated one way thatprospective teachers can engage in scientific inquiry. Surely others need to be explored, described,valued and understood.

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We suspect that one resolution is found in the role of the teacher, not as subject-matterauthority or information disseminator, but rather as an insider to the disciplinewith unique insightregarding how knowledge is created. Our study is a reminder that teachers serve an important rolein classrooms by guiding and scaffolding ways in which knowledge, particularly analogies, getsshaped, refuted, and promoted. Exemplary curricula alone are no substitute for the teacher’s roleas the primary driver for rules of discourse in collaborative settings. This kind of classroominteraction stands in sharp relief to the kinds of talking science that are found in moreconventionally managed classrooms. Traditionally, school scientific discourse is a teacher-directed monologue that masquerades as a student–teacher dialogue, in which students have littleopportunity to discuss and pursue questions inways that aremeaningful to them (Lemke, 1990). Insignificant ways, Frank, Chris, andMike are anomalies not only because they asked many of theirown questions, butmore important, because they developedways of answering their questions thatwere useful and meaningful to them. If we are to produce teachers able to facilitate a morerepresentative discourse in elementary classrooms, we need to alter the experiences of ourprospective elementary teachers long before they announce their candidacy in their third year ofhigher education.

Although we have emphasized the importance and value of the learning that occurred in thisgroup, it clearly did not develop without complications and drawbacks. Indeed, there are manyconcerns and questions generated in the study. Collaborative learning situations offer tremendouspotential for the development of critically reasoned discourse, yet the nature of group work associal interaction raises questions about competition for the domination of discussions and howideas are promoted, supported, and accepted. A great deal of schooling seems to support thesocialization of individuals to be participants in a highly competitive society. We have concernsabout how to shift this focus toward interactions that support multiple interpretations of problems.Given the intense sociocultural focus on competition and the discrimination that oftenaccompanies it, how can collaborative learning groups be structured so that all members haveequal access to shape and benefit fromdiscussions?There is no readily available solution; the issuestands as an indicator of the challenges of successfully incorporating collaborative groups intoinstructional designs. Perhaps teachers would greatly benefit from continuing, connectedexperiences in collaborative settings that attempt to address these issues, with opportunities thatsupport reflection and discussion of tolerance, cooperation, and understanding. Teachersthemselves need to develop skills in collaboration before they can be expected to construct andsustain effective learning environments that rely on these skills.

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