Creating a Taken-As-Shared Understanding for Scientific Explanation: Classroom Norm Perspective

The study aimed to investigate whether classroom norm perspective influence the students’ capability of
elucidating a natural phenomena and beliefs about scientific explanation. In particular, our objective was to
explore the process by which the norm for scientific explanation was established and discover how the students’
explanation and their beliefs about scientific explanation altered in this process. A case study approach was
adopted and a total of 51 students participated in the study. The data has included videotapes of classroom
periods for an entire school semester, individual interviews with the students conducted at the beginning and at
the end of the semester, and students’ written responses collected in the middle and at the end of the semester in
the year of 2012. In creating a sociocultural norm for scientific explanation, the teacher, in the class, was seen
declaring his own expectation, negotiating the meaning by making comments on and legitimizing students’
accounts, and calling the students’ attention towards the important parts of an acceptable explanation. The
results indicated that towards the end of the semester, the students’ explanation and their beliefs about scientific
explanation have considerably improved.