Developing an Understanding of the Nature of Science and Scientific Explanations by Using Explicit- reflective Instruction in the Topic of Force and Sound of Grade 5 Students at Wat Mai Amatarod School in Bangkok Metropolis

Abstract

This action research aimed to develop fifth-grade students’ understanding of the nature of science and students’ scientific explanation by using explicit- reflective instruction in the topic of force and sound and to find out good teaching practices in explicit- reflective instruction. The participants were 11 fifth-grade students at Wat Mai Amatarod School. Data were obtained from the nature of science test, scientific explanation test, students’ reflective journal, teacher’s reflective journal and student’ worksheets. Content analysis, frequency and percentage were employed for analyzing the data.
The results of this research show that 1)Through explicit-reflective instruction students had understanding of the nature of science at complete understanding than before learning in particularly the social and cultural embeddedness of scientific knowledge and the tentative nature of science knowledge. 2) In post-learning, the students’ scientific explanation was higher than the pre-learning counterpart, students developed their scientific explanation ability as follows: 2 students (18.18 percent) were at a good level, 5 students (45.45 percent) were at a moderate level, and 4 students (36.36 percent) were at an improvement level.In addition, the most developed component was claim and evidence. 3)The good teaching practices in learning management using explicit- reflective instruction were (1) using questions and discussion in terms of the nature of science aspects that related with inquiry activities or science learning activities was useful for developing students’ understanding of the nature of science as empirical evidence; (2) explicit writing about component of scientific explanations supported the construction of scientific explanations and extending to other events or phenomena; (3) hands-on activities and sharing idea or explain phenomena supported the construction of scientific explanations that coherence among claims and evidence.