ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two interventions which sought to explore how students and teachers develop science explanations through written narratives, with one intervention taking place in school with 16-year-old students (55 students), and the other in a university with pre-service science teachers (140 teachers over three cohorts). These two distinct groups of participants were both asked to write a series of explanations of observed scientific phenomena, with the teachers being given feedback on their explanations. Analysis of the explanations revealed that this process benefited both groups of learners; diagnosing and developing their scientific knowledge and understanding, serving as a vehicle for developing their use of scientific language, and providing pedagogical benefits for the pre-service science teachers. Although carried out independently with separate frameworks of analysis and different purposes, these two interventions provided complementary insights in the learning of science. Crucially, both interventions aimed to help the participants develop an understanding of what counts as an explanation in science and how to construct one.
