Teaching the Scientific Method to At-Risk Students and Students with Learning Disabilities Through Concept Anchoring and Explicit Instruction

Abstract

Increased attention is being devoted to the development of science literacy as repeated findings demonstrate students' lack of scientific understanding. To provide all students an opportunity to become science-literate, significant changes have been proposed in both the content being addressed and the instructional practices being used in teaching science. In this study, we manipulated both of these facets to teach the scientific method to at-risk students and students with learning disabilities. The content was framed with concepts and principles, and instruction was explicit, using rules to guide classroom activities. A combination of classroom observations and problem-solving tasks yielded significant differences between students taught with this enhanced approach over that achieved when instruction simply provided hands-on constructivistic activities not anchored to concepts or not explicitly delivered through rules.