ABSTRACT

An important issue in education generally, and science education specifically, is understanding how to modify classroom learning environments to encourage cultures of inquiry rather than cultures of fact memorization. One fruitful approach researchers are taking is to look closely at the language of the classroom. The language of the classroom is important precisely because it provides the basic information for how knowledge is being constructed and on what grounds knowledge claims are being judged. In brief, the promotion of language-based activities helps make thinking visible. In turn, making thinking visible enables formative assessment opportunities for teachers that help students learn. To be sure, learning in any content area requires the mastery of a body of factual knowledge. However, for this knowledge to be useful, flexible, and usable, it must be represented and organized in ways that facilitate its use in context and under appropriate conditions (Bransford, Franks, Vye, & Sherwood, 1989; Simon, 1980; Whitehead, 1929). In science classrooms, the context and conditions of importance are the ways evidence is related to models and explanations and how arguments are constructed to link these three together. Not only facts must be represented; the processes by which disciplines generate new “facts” and knowledge need to be learned. These processes are as much social as they are cognitive. Individuals contribute ideas, thinking, and reasoning to a community-based, collaborative, knowledge construction process. Knowledge emerges as these ideas, thoughts, and reasoning “bump up against” one another in a dialectical process.