Our objective has been to develop an instructional theory and corresponding curricular materials that make scientific inquiry accessible to a wide range of students, including younger and lower achieving students. We hypothesized that this could be achieved by recognizing the importance of metacognition and creating an instructional approach that develops students' metacognitive knowledge and skills through a process of scaffolded inquiry, reflection, and generalization. Toward this end, we collaborated with teachers to create a computer enhanced, middle school science curriculum that engages students in learning about and reflecting on the processes of scientific inquiry as they construct increasingly complex models of force and motion phenomena. The resulting ThinkerTools Inquiry Curriculum centers around a metacognitive model of research, called the Inquiry Cycle, and a metacognitive process, called Reflective Assessment, in which students reflect on their own and each other's inquiry. In this article, we report on instructional trials of the curriculum by teachers in urban classrooms, including a controlled comparison to determine the impact of including or not including the Reflective Assessment Process. Overall, the curriculum proved successful and students' performance improved significantly on both physics and inquiry assessments. The controlled comparison revealed that students' learning was greatly facilitated by Reflective Assessment. Furthermore, adding this metacognitive process to the curriculum was particularly beneficial for low-achieving students: Performance on their research projects and inquiry tests was significantly closer to that of high-achieving students than was the case in the control classes. Thus, this approach has the valuable effect of reducing the educational disadvantage of low-achieving students while also being beneficial for high-achieving students. We argue that these findings have strong implications for what such metacognitively focused, inquiry-oriented curricula can accomplish, particularly in urban school settings in which there are many disadvantaged students. (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s1532690xci1601_2)

Inquiry, Modeling, and Metacognition: Making Science Accessible to All Students

Etablissement de quelques principes de changement semantique sous-tendant le developpement des elements lexicaux et grammaticaux dans l'expression des modalites epistemiques

On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change

Contents: Preface. Introduction. Part I: Historical Backgrounds. Analytic, Dialectic and Rhetoric. Analysis of Fallacies, Controversy, and Discussion. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric. Toulmin's Model of Argumentation. Part II: Contemporary Developments. Informal Logic and Critical Thinking. Communication and Rhetoric. Fallacies and Formal Logic. Dialogue Logic and Formal Dialectics. Pragma-Dialectics and Critical Discussion. Language-Oriented Approaches to Argumentation. Other Significant Developments.

Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory : A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments

Cognitive Processes in Propositional Reasoning.

This paper addresses how specific modeling practices employed by scientists are productive methods of conceptual change in science. Within philosophy, where the identification of reasoning with argument and logic is deeply ingrained, these practices have not traditionally been considered significant forms of scientific reasoning. Embracing these modeling practices as “methods” of conceptual change in science requires expanding philosophical notions of scientific reasoning to encompass forms of creative reasoning. I focus on three forms of model-based reasoning demonstrated in my previous work as generative of conceptual change in science: analogical modeling, visual modeling, and thought experimenting. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain. In the modeling process, various forms of abstraction, such as limiting case, idealization, generalization, generic modeling, are utilized. Evaluation and adaptation take place in light of structural, causal, and/or functional constraint satisfaction. Simulation can be used to produce new states and enable evaluation of behaviors, constraint satisfaction, and other factors.

Model-Based Reasoning in Conceptual Change

Preface: This volume originated in a conference on "The Place of Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy" which was organized by us and held at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, April 18-20, 1986. The idea behind this conference was to encourage philosophers and scientists to talk to each other about the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines. These papers were either written for the conference, or were written after it by commentators and other participants.... We hope that this volume will be of use to other philosophers and scientists who are interested in thought experiments, as well as inspire more work in this area....

Thought experiments in science and philosophy

The Fallacy behind Fallacies

Are There Any Good Arguments That Bad Arguments Are Bad

In Defense of the Asymmetry

To most laypersons and scientists, science and progress appear to go hand in hand, yet philosophers and historians of science have long questioned the inevitability of this pairing. As we take leave of a century acclaimed for scientific advances and progress, Science at Century's End, the eighth volume of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy and History of Science, takes the reader to the heart of this important matter. Subtitled Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Science, this timely volume contains twenty penetrating essays by prominent philosophers and historians who explore and debate the limits of scientific inquiry and their presumed consequences for science in the 21st century.

Gerald J. Massey

Papers

Thought experiments in science and philosophy

The Fallacy behind Fallacies

Are There Any Good Arguments That Bad Arguments Are Bad

In Defense of the Asymmetry

Science at Century's End Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Science