Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education

Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 2020 - Volume 16 Issue 4, Article No: e2220
https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/8421

Published Online: 18 Sep 2020

Views: 778 | Downloads: 442

According to literature, science-based stories can not only trigger students’ curiosity about scientific concepts but also increase their understanding of them as well as to facilitate the retention of information in students’ memory. It is a common practice for elementary school teachers to create stories in order to teach several topics. To investigate the ability of pre-service teachers in Science story writing, we selected the topic of karst caves which it can be studied through many disciplines (i.e. Geography, Geology, Biology, Chemistry, Environmental education, Ecology) according to the Greek curriculum. Moreover, although karst caves are part of Greece’s geological history, they are neither taught nor extensively mentioned in the Greek Primary and Secondary Education curricula. In this research, we examined whether Greek pre-service primary school teachers are able to create complete science-based stories about karst caves, by following the necessary didactic transposition of scientific concepts and the key elements in structure and plot of a such a story. For this purpose, we assessed by content analysis 100 pre-service teachers’ written stories. The results revealed that most of the participants achieved to create sufficient stories in structure and plot, whereas they did not achieve to transpose the necessary scientific concepts that they had included in their writing.

science-based stories story writing science education; Karst Caves geography-geology caves’ ecosystem

• Abrahamson, C. E. (1998). Storytelling as a pedagogical tool in higher education. Education, 118(3), 440-452.
• Achiam, M. (2014). Didactic transposition: From theoretical notion to research programme. ESERA summer school, Kapadokya, Turkey, August 24, 29, 2014.
• Boström, A. (2006). Sharing lived experience: How upper secondary school chemistry teachers and students use narratives to make chemistry more meaningful (Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm Institute of Education Press).
• Bruner, J. S. (1996). The culture of education. Harvard University Press.
• Chevallard, Y. (1985). Didactic transposition, the learned knowledge to knowledge taught. La pensée wild, Grenoble.
• Coertjens, L., Boeve-de Pauw, J., De Maeyer, S., & Van Petegem, P. (2010). Do schools make a difference in their students’ environmental attitudes and awareness? Evidence from PISA 2006. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 8(3), 497-522.
• Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2008). Methodology in education research (in Greek).
• Corni, F., Giliberti, E., & Fuchs, H. U. (2014). Student teachers writing science stories: A case study. In ESERA 2013 Conference-Science Education Research for Evidence-based Teaching and Coherence in Learning (pp. 2494-2505). ESERA.
• Develay, M. (1992). De l’apprentissage à l’enseignement.[From learning to teaching]. Paris, ESF.
• Egan, K. (1989). Teaching as story telling: An alternative approach to teaching and curriculum in the elementary school. University of Chicago Press.
• Elmore, R. F., Peterson, P. L., & McCarthey, S. J. (1996). Restructuring in the classroom: Teaching, learning, and school organization. Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA 94104; Web site: http://www. josseybass.com.
• Francek, M. (2013). A compilation and review of over 500 geoscience misconceptions. International Journal of Science Education, 35(1), 31-64.
• Frisch, J. K. (2010). The stories they’d tell: pre-service elementary teachers writing stories to demonstrate physical science concepts. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 21(6), 703-722.
• Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007a). What we know, what we still need to know: Teaching adolescents to write. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11(4), 313-335.
• Graham, S., & Hebert, M. (2010). Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.
• Graham, S., & Hebert, M. (2011). Writing to read: A meta-analysis of the impact of writing and writing instruction on reading. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 710-744.
• Graham, S., MacArthur, C. A., & Fitzgerald, J. (Eds.). (2013). Best practices in writing instruction. Guilford Press.
• Green, M., C. (2004). Storytelling in teaching. Observer, 17(4): 37–38, 52–54.
• Groves, F. H. (1995). Science vocabulary load of selected secondary science textbooks. School Science and Mathematics, 95(5), 231-235.
• Hadjigeorgiou, G. (2006). Towards a scientific education. Grigoris Publications.
• Hamer, L. (1999). A folkloristic approach to understanding teachers as storytellers. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 12(4), 363-380.
• Işıtan, S., & Doğan, Ö. (2015). An Examination of 1st, 2nd And 3rd Grade Elementary School Students’ Story-Telling Skills Based on Narrative Analysis. Education & Science 40(177).
• Johsua, S., & Dupin, J. J. (1993). Using “Modelling Analogies” to teach basic electricity: A critical analysis. In Learning Electricity and Electronics with Advanced Educational Technology (pp. 39-55). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
• Kastning, E. H., & Kastning, K. M. (1999, October). Misconceptions about caves and karst: Common problems and educational solutions. In Proceedings of the 14th National Cave and Karst Management Symposium (pp. 99-107).
• Kirkby, K. (2008). ‘Easier to Address’ Earth Science Misconceptions. Teaching Introductory Geoscience Courses in the 21st Century. Teach the Earth: the portal for Earth Education https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/intro/misconception_list.html retrieved 30 March 2020.
• Klassen, S. (2006). A theoretical framework for contextual science teaching. Interchange, 37(1-2), 31-62.
• Koening, J. M., & Zorn, C. R. (2002). Using storytelling as an approach to teaching and learning with diverse students. Journal of Nursing Education, 41(9), 393-399.
• Kokkotas, P., Rizaki, A., & Malamitsa, K. (2010). Storytelling as a strategy for understanding concepts of electricity and electromagnetism. Interchange, 41(4), 379-405.
• Koliopoulos, D. (2006). Didactic subjects of natural sciences. Formation of knowledge acquired at school (in Greek). Metaixmio, Athens.
• Kubli, F. (2001). Can the theory of narratives help science teachers be better storytellers?. In Science Education and Culture (pp. 179-183). Springer, Dordrecht.
• Martin, G. (2018). Storytelling and narrative inquiry: Exploring research methodologies. In D. McGregor, J. Restoule & R. Johnston (Eds.), Indigenous research: Theories, practices, and relationships. (pp. 187 - 199). Toronto: Canadian Scholars
• McComas, K., & Shanahan, J. (1999). Telling stories about global climate change: Measuring the impact of narratives on issue cycles. Communication Research, 26(1), 30-57.
• Mavrikaki, E. & Kapsala, N. (2014). Teaching biology by storytelling. Ιn G. Katsiampoura (ed.), Scientific Cosmopolitanism and Local Cultures: Religions, Ideologies, Societies, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science – 5ESHS (pp. 612-617). Athens. ISBN 978-960-98199-3-0.
• Mavrikaki, E., Koumparou, H., Kyriakoudi, M., Papacharalampous, I., & Trimandili, M. (2012). Greek secondary school students’ views about biology. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 7(2), 217-232.
• Millar, R. & Osborne, J., F. (1998). Beyond 2000: Science Education for the Future. London: King’s College London.
• Pipan, T., & Culver, D. (2013). Forty years of epikarst: what biology have we learned? International Journal of Speleology, 42(3), 5.
• Postman, N. (1989). Learning by story. The Atlantic, 264(6), 119-124.
• Romanelli, F. (2016). Are great teachers great storytellers?. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 80(6), 93.
• Rowcliffe, S. (2004). Storytelling in science. School science review, 86(314), 121.
• Sherwood, S. C., & Simek, J. F. (2001). Introduction: Cave archaeology in the eastern Woodlands. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 26(2), 135-137.
• Tiberghien, G. (1989). Advances in cognitive science. Ellis Horwood Limited.
• Vellopoulou, A., & Ravanis, K. (2010). A methodological tool for approaching the didactic transposition of the natural sciences in kindergarten school: the case of the “states and properties of matter” in two Greek curricula. Review of Science, Mathematics and ICT Education, 4(2), 29-42.
• Walan, S. (2019). Teaching children science through storytelling combined with hands-on activities–a successful instructional strategy?. Education 3-13, 47(1), 34-46.
• Wightman, S. K., & Roney, R. C. (2013). The effects of story performance on fifth-grade students’ comprehension of narrative texts. Storytelling, Self, Society, 9(1), 20-52.
• Yin, R.K. (1984) Case study research - design and methods. Sage Publications. Beverly Hills.
• Zazkis, R., & Liljedahl, P. (2009). Creating a story. In Teaching Mathematics as Storytelling (pp. 85-99). Brill Sense.
• Zazkis, R., Liljedahl, P., & Sinclair, N. (2009). Lesson plays: Planning teaching versus teaching planning. For the Learning of Mathematics, 29(1), 40-47.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.