National Writing Project Annual Meeting: Composing Science

NWP WORKSHOP

materials available at: composingscience.com

STRUCTURE OF WORKSHOP

• background on our course & book

• what makes reading and writing in science uniquely hard?

• what can we do about it? - examples from our course

• getting started: scientific notebooks

• Q&A

ABOUT THE COURSE

WHAT IS UNIQUELY HARD ABOUT SCIENTIFIC WRITING?

1.Concealment of rhetoric

• “it is not a laboratory notebook... Cleansed of messiness, portrays knowledge as unproblematic, unambiguous, repeatable truths...” (Collins & Shapin)

2.Use of grammatic metaphors

• turn “happenings” into “stable phenomena” (parameter-induced stochastic resonance) (Halliday, 2004)

3.Empirical evidence as a tool of persuasion • “Observation and experiment ... are the handmaidens to the

rational activity of generating arguments in support of knowledge claims...” (Driver, Newton & Osborne)

4.Addressivity of science texts • high degree of intertexuality, “invites, in fact solicits, responses

from others and seeks to engage them...” (Sharma & Anderson)

5.Coordinates multiple modes • connecting representation, mathematics, images, text

Hallmarks of scientific writing

EXCLUDE PARTICIPATION IN SCIENCE:

• concealment of rhetoric: • “final form,” a “rhetoric of conclusions” (Duschl; Schwab)

• grammatic metaphors: • ambiguous, abstract, remote from concrete experience

• role of evidence: • easily misunderstood as proof or goal of inquiry

• addressivity: • requires a knowledge of the ongoing debate

•multiple modes: • requires understanding and translating between modes

... WHAT TO DO?

• strategies, rubrics, standards?

WHY NOT DO THAT?

• it’s not what scientists do. Practices emerge in the context of their use.

NSCI 321: SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

• undergraduate Liberal Studies majors (future elementary teachers)

• 21 women, 2 men

• engage students in scientific inquiry into perception

• co-taught with a biologist (neuroscience)

•week 2/3

EXPLANATIONS FOR A SPOT OF LIGHT

tube as “blocking”

tube as “concentrating”

CONSTRUCTING “THE SECONDS”

Student-constructed term:

- perceptually distinct (“fuzzy edge”)

- highly theoretical: “there’s the fuzzy edge...” “those are...”

- creates a category of objects (via nominalization of “second”)

- experimental role in “carving at the joints”- a reason to believe in this “happening” as a thing to be nominalized

- largely an individual effort, but a strong role of others (Dee) - particularly dissension / skepticism

Explaining and diagramming “seconds”

SHAPING A DEFINITION

•There are thirds, fourths, fifths, etc.

•These “matter” because each successive “bounce” is dimmer than the one before.

Amanda

“I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE A SECOND.”

•Amanda, who invented the term, recognizes that her use of it is not as sensible as someone else’s.

• subtle change in the ontology of “second” (rays become seconds)

• through these negotiations the ambiguities inherent in spoken language become increasingly precise

• the diagrams, in particular provide a referent for referent and signal for these ambiguities -- but how to resolve them?

Jordan Breanna Courtney

SHAPING A DEFINITION

•Recognition of a the social construction: “are we agreeing to call a second...?”

•Demand for precision: “I need a more set definition before I feel comfortable using it.”

• Pedagogical moves: • “We need to agree on terminology...” • “They’re calling it a second...”

•Reframing for precision: “Your question is: ‘If it bounces off of the mirror, is it a first or a second?’”

CHARACTERISTICS OF DEFINITIONS

•Definitions in science as:

• socially constructed

• a nominalization (seconds)

• subject to agreement

• representational

• identified (stabilized) experimentally and gramatically

• demanding precision (intersubjectivity)

OPERATIONALIZING “SECONDS”

•Definitions: a matter of convention?

•Courtney looks to instructors - is our role to help select a definition that will prove productive?

• Pedagogical moves: nature of objects in theories

•Dee: So I guess the real question is: when it hits the mirror is any of the light absorbed? Because to me the definition of a second is, when it hits something, some of the light is absorbed, so not all of it is coming back out.

DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION TOSSED BACK TO EXPERIMENT

• Is any light absorbed?

• Is light off of a mirror a “second”?

• In what way are mirrors and paper reflecting light “much differently”?

•Can we distinguish 2nd, 3rd, 4ths?

“The transition [from talking to writing science]... is facilitated when students are provided with opportunities to express themselves... utilizing means of expression that bear iconic relations with the situations they experienced and the gestures they used...” -Roth, 2004

“If our knowledge is to be organized systematically (especially if this depends on being able to measure things), we need phenomena that are stable: that persist through time, and can readily be grouped into classes.’’ - Halliday, 2004

“Scientific literacy... is the ability to make meaning conjointly with verbal concepts, mathematical relationships, visual representations, and manual-technical operations.” - Lemke

“It is more productive not to converge on a definition until further empirical and theoretical progress points us toward the best way to ‘cut up [nature] ... along its natural joints.” -Elby, 2009

DEE’S DEFINITION IS WRONG?

•Dee: “To me, the definition of a second is when it hits and some of the light is absorbed, so not all of it is coming back out.”

• a negotiation with the world regarding our definitions: “carving nature at its joints”

PARTICIPATION IN SCIENTIFIC PRACTICES AS LEVER

1.concealment of rhetoric

2.Use of grammatic metaphors (nominalization)

3.Empirical evidence as a tool of persuasion

4.Addressivity of texts

5.Coordinating multiple modes

How do we get this started? !

your turn!

SCIENTISTS WRITE.

• Latour (1990) found that when scientists were unable to access their graphs, they “hesitated, stuttered and talked nonsense” (p. 22) and were only able to resume the conversation when a graph was scribbled onto whatever scrap of paper was at hand.

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY• The Premise:

• to understand scientific claims, you need to know how the game of science is played

• to understand how the game is played, there is no substitute for playing it

• The Goal:

• design a course where - to the degree possible - students are “playing the game” of science instead of “doing the lesson”

THE GOAL• as much as possible, the demands of “doing science”-- creating

coherent, mechanistic models of physical phenomena-- would drive scientific practices

• operational definitions, precise language

• role of evidence (as “handmaiden”)

• experimentation as a test of theory

• precise diagrams as predictive tools

• lab notes

LAB NOTEBOOKS

• without a lecture, would it be clear to students that there would be a role for notebooks?

• for taking notes on their peers’ ideas?

• their nascent ideas?

• their diagrams, data, experiments?

• more broadly, to see writing as a powerful way of learning and knowing

STUDENT TASKOn the following pages are images from several famous scientists’ research notebooks-- the notebook used to keep track of ideas, observations and experiments as he worked. With your group, discuss what you notice about these notebooks. Do not describe the actual work the scientist did, but ways in which s/he took notes and organized information.

Below is a list of a few things you might notice, but be sure to generate more observations than just these: • what does the page look like? • are there procedures described? • what is the style of writing? Personal, objective, colloquial, etc.? • how do these famous scientists’ research notebooks compare to lab

notebooks you have kept in other science classes? • what is a scientists’ research notebook for?

Keep track of your groups’ ideas on the whiteboard you have been provided. We will generate a rubric with guidelines and standards for keeping a research notebook in this class based on the lists you have generated.

“I am astonished! It is 18 days since I started thinking about bottinoite. Only last night, in bed, did I recognize that the formula Ni(OH2)6Sb(OH)6 is wrong. It would required SbII, which is unlikely. It is a pale blue-green mineral.

Two possibilities...

But I have now noticed that (scientists) give the formulas as...

Hence all of my preceding discussion needs to be revised.”

-Linus Pauling

“I think Case must be that [in] one generation there should be as many living as now.

To do this and to have [as] many species in same genus (as is) requires extinction. Thus between A & B immense gap of relation; C & B the finest gradation, B & D rather greater distinction. Thus genera would be formed, bearing relation...”

- Charles Darwin

“success at put down.

Build a structure to demonstrate...

success at pick up

success at put down...

I'm really having fun!!

Do some more: successful pickup.”

-Don Eigler (wrote the letters IBM with 35 xenon atoms on a nickel surface)

“A model: Lonely 5 cells: cannot bind to each other. Lonely 21 cells: cannot bind to each other either. But Happy 5+21 cells can bind with many cells, but first come, first serve (as far as sex is concerned). If trypsin or BME added to 21 cells...”

- James Hicks

An image from Einstein’s notebook.

WHAT STUDENTS NOTICE

ROLES OF THE NOTEBOOKpublic v. private

DEVELOPING A RUBRICif our goal is for students to do science, what should be

evidence that students are doing science?

NSCI 321 - Scientific InquiryNotebook Rubric

Your research notebook should be meaningful and useful to you-- the requirements should not feel arbitrary or irrelevant to the work you are doing. At the same time, it should meet the standards of scientific notebooks: this is neither a personal diary of ideas and thoughts, nor a simple documentation of observations. This rubric should be helpful in making sure that you strike a balance between the two.

When you submit your notebook, you should do a self-assessment of your strengths (+) and your weaknesses (-) -- not every item needs a + or a -, but if something stands out to you as an area where you excel or an area where you need to work harder, you should note that.

You should also indicate a few pages from your notebook that provide good evidence that you are meeting the requirement. We will look over all of your pages when considering your grade, but it will be helpful for us to know which pages are particularly strong examples.

If you miss a day, you should photocopy the lab notebook from one of your research team members and include this in your notebook. This will be useful in making sure you have all the information you need for homework and exams. If you turn your notebook in late (why would you? we don’t know...) it’s 10% off for each day late.

Subjective requirements: These requirements are, in general, a measure of your personality as a researcher. Does your notebook demonstrate that you are reflecting, thinking, curious and engaged rather than simply going through the motions and copying down the data?

Subjective requirements: These requirements are, in general, a measure of your personality as a researcher. Does your notebook demonstrate that you are reflecting, thinking, curious and engaged rather than simply going through the motions and copying down the data?

Subjective requirements: These requirements are, in general, a measure of your personality as a researcher. Does your notebook demonstrate that you are reflecting, thinking, curious and engaged rather than simply going through the motions and copying down the data?

Subjective requirements: These requirements are, in general, a measure of your personality as a researcher. Does your notebook demonstrate that you are reflecting, thinking, curious and engaged rather than simply going through the motions and copying down the data?

requirement ✓± pages? grade

includes some notion of what you’re thinking, expecting, and/or assuming (what you’re thinking at the time - “know”)

includes some kind of questions about what you’re hoping to understand/answer/show (what you want to know)

reflection and analysis of what it is you’ve observed, some notion of a “trajectory” of ideas and thinking (what you have learned)

some obvious engagement, creativity, individuality and personal expression (this could be, for example, through your sketches, ideas, notes in the margin -- or through your careful attention to detail, precision, organization, etc.)

Scientific Inquiry L. Atkins & I. Salter

Objective requirements: These requirements, in general, are a measure of how useful your notebook will be as a reference for you and others in following the sequence of ideas, experiments, and discussions from this course.

Objective requirements: These requirements, in general, are a measure of how useful your notebook will be as a reference for you and others in following the sequence of ideas, experiments, and discussions from this course.

Objective requirements: These requirements, in general, are a measure of how useful your notebook will be as a reference for you and others in following the sequence of ideas, experiments, and discussions from this course.

Objective requirements: These requirements, in general, are a measure of how useful your notebook will be as a reference for you and others in following the sequence of ideas, experiments, and discussions from this course.

requirement ✓± pages? grade

all pages are numbered, all days are dated

titles when starting something new (use your own sense of organization to decide when/where/how often)

clear descriptions, including diagrams with labels, of what you’re doing to answer your questions/curiosities (how you’ve learned it)

detailed, accurate observations

any references (to other classmates’ work/ideas or outside readings) are noted clearly when used

Scientific Inquiry L. Atkins & I. Salter

Personal relevance: These requirements are, in general, a measure of your personality as a researcher. Does your notebook demonstrate that you are reflecting, thinking, curious and engaged rather than simply going through the motions and copying down the data? Is your notebook clearly relevant to you?

requirement pages? grade

shows evidence of a “progression” of ideas and thinking, shows how you got to your answer and why you think that

as part of this progression of ideas, mistakes and ideas that you later disagree with are not erased; rather, these are crossed out

includes questions about what you’re hoping to understand/answer/show, questions about what confuses you, or new questions that your research has raised

some obvious personal expression, personality, individual style, engagement, and creativity (for example, sketches, ideas, notes in the margin, careful attention to detail, organization, etc.)

space in the margins or between sections to fill in ideas later and refer back to earlier questions and work

Publicly useful: These requirements are a measure of how useful your notebook is as a reference for others in following the sequence of ideas, experiments, and data.

requirement pages? grade

all days are dated

a sense of organization (titles/headings for different topics; labels on diagrams)

diagrams and illustrations with labels

detailed, accurate observations

clear descriptions of experiments so that others could build off of your work (or check on the accuracy of your findings) if necessary

RESULTS

• what do we notice?

sketches out ideas. notes: “Maybe the lens has nothing to

do with flipping the image. If the lens can’t move far enough

away from the eye...:

... BUT, after drawing my prediction, I changed my

mind!...

What actually happened!... When we blocked off half the light... what we saw looked no different the the beam without

the tape...

Without the tube, the beam was illuminated on the

opposite side the tape was on. This must be because of the

mirror. The tube has acted like a mirror.

My group’s discussion. We have all agreed upon the notion that light seems to “kush” out when it hits a

surface...

We were thinking this is what happens. But Breanna’s group pointed out that it crosses at the pupil, so it would look like

this.

Epiphany! The distance the light source is

from the lens is the same distance the light passes the midline on the other side of

the lens.

Well my group and I disagree... On if louder means more air particles. I believe that the louder we are

the more air particles are used... although they don’t move any faster.

Newton’s picture is confusing me - it bends at the back of the lens and there is no pupil... does it not

matter? Now I am really confused. I thought I understood what the lens was doing...

Group definition of sound... !

My idea *...

Wikipedia

THOUGHTS• the notebooks look scientific... (“procedural display?”)

• students report really valuing and keeping these notebooks - great pride in what they are and represent

• “Hi Leslie, It’s Janeal. I just moved and was unpacking old boxes when I found my inquiry notebook. I am so proud of that thing! I just spent an hour explaining the human eye and pinhole theater to my boyfriend.”

• students report “I journal all the time, but it never occurred to me to do this with my classes...”

• I love reading through them and grading them

QUESTIONS

• what kinds of classes would benefit from this kind of notebook?

• what does that say?

• how to characterize writing to document v. writing to learn?

THANK YOU!

• session organizers

• NSF

• our students

READING TOGETHER & WRITING TOGETHER

• annotated google docs as a way to help students understand texts