To determine the competencies required for scientific literacy, it is useful to draw on an overview proposed by Jürgen Mayer (2007, p. 178), who arranged the com-petence constructs typically cited in the scientific literacy literature as follows (see Figure 6):
Figure 6. Framework concept of scientific competencies following Mayer (2007)
Of course, Mayer’s framework concept refers to trained scientists or professional researchers, and it does not distinguish between lifeworld, historical, scientif-ic-causal, and ideology-critical forms of knowledge. However, if one assumes that every competence is initiated and formed in a process of lifelong learning, Mayer’s grid is also relevant when it comes to asking what competencies can be initiated as early as pre-primary or primary school age.
If one reads Figure 6 from top to bottom, one can gauge the aspects that can be achieved at pre-primary and primary school levels. I maintain that lessons or extracurricular learning opportunities that are limited mainly to action-oriented lab-type work – as advocated by numerous popular books and the many exper-iment instructions that circulate on the Internet – are primarily suitable for im-parting practical skills in handling the most basic instruments and devices, and
perhaps also simple scientific procedures. These skills include, for example, handling bottles, funnels, measuring beakers, candles, and simple measuring in-struments, such as yardsticks, wind gauges, thermometers, etc. Experiment tasks and instructions, which are usually given to the children without their asking (!), always run the risk of neglecting – or, indeed, even preventing – understanding of the phenomena discussed, because children are expected to achieve a level of understanding that is hardly possible in the short time available and in view of their age-appropriate conceptions of the natural world and its laws.
In contrast to the imparting of basic practical skills, I consider the initiation of a genuine understanding of the nature of science, in the sense of “epistemological views” or beliefs, to be a major challenge not only for children of pre-primary and primary school age but also for most teachers and educators, unless they have studied science during their professional training. However, the average prima-ry teacher is not usually sufficiently qualified to facilitate real understanding of the nature of science. Nor are the majority of the many educators who provide children with science experiments at early childhood education and care centres, after-school centres, and in extracurricular afternoon programmes at primary schools. A tacit understanding of the nature of science may possibly be built up at pre-primary and primary school age. However, as research in subject didactics over the last 20 years has shown, an understanding of the nature of science calls for systematic reflection on, and systematically guided discourse about, science.
This, in turn, requires years of experience of dealing with, and solving, scientific questions in genuinely scientific teaching-learning situations. Following Sodian (2002), the ability to differentiate between hypotheses and evidence can hardly be expected of primary school children, as they often have difficulties understand-ing the purpose and aim of hypothesis testunderstand-ing (Hellmich & Höntges, 2010, p. 75;
on the current state of research on primary school children’s knowledge building capacity, see Sodian’s contribution in Anders et al., 2017b, pp. 109–123 in this volume).
The competence construct on the middle level in Figure 6 – scientific reason-ing – is an appropriate target for children of pre-primary and primary school age.
It implies joint reflection on specific questions about nature, their answerability, and the observations and actions carried out to answer them.
Scientific reasoning
What is scientific reasoning? In what follows, I present four definitions of this con-struct.
Einsiedler describes scientific reasoning in its simplest form as “asking for reasons and evidence for assertions” (1992, p. 484; cited in Beinbrech et al., 2009, p. 140).
Tytler, Hubber, and Chittleborough (2012, p. 3) define scientific reasoning as follows: “Deliberative thinking that involves choices, leading to a justifiable claim. The setting of identifiable and generative relations between entities. It is often associated with high order thinking, (…) solving non-standard problems, claim backing using evidence.”
Shemwell and Furtak (2010; cited in Tytler, 2011, p. 3) distinguish:
■ “claim-based reasoning: a statement of what something will do in the future (prediction), or is happening in the present or past (conclusion or outcome)
■ data-based reasoning: a claim backed up by a single observable property
■ evidence-based reasoning: a claim supported or backed up by statements describing a contextualized relationship between two observable properties, or a contextualized relationship between a property and an observable con-sequence of that property”
In the EQUALPRIME project (Hackling, Ramseger, & Chen 2017),24 the following indicators were used to determine situations in which scientific reasoning takes place.
Scientific reasoning is deemed to occur when children
■ articulate their prior knowledge of, and their own assumptions about, a phe-nomenon;
■ formulate their own hypotheses and have to defend them against probing;
■ develop and justify their own inquiry activity designs on the basis of their hypotheses;
■ recognise and discuss sources of error, contradictions, or events that are con-trary to expectations in their inquiry activities or inquiry activity designs;
■ formulate and/or explain their own justifications for phenomena they ob-serve;
24 EQUALPRIME – Exploring quality primary education in different cultures: A cross-national study of teaching and learning in primary science classrooms. A research project of the Australian Research Council 2009–2013. Principal Investigators: Prof. Dr Russell Tytler, Deakin University, Melbourne;
Prof. Dr Mark Hackling, Edith Cowan University, Perth; Prof. Dr Hsiao-Lan Sharon Chen, National wan Normal University, Taipei; Prof. Dr Chao-Ti Hsiung, National Taipei University of Education, Tai-pei; Prof. Dr Jörg Ramseger, Freie Universität Berlin. See Hackling, Ramseger, & Chen 2017.
■ discursively agree on a description, justification, or interpretation;
■ act on the basis of a finding (observable objectivations of knowledge gains in concrete action); and
■ reflect on their own learning pathways (metacognition).
Only teaching that plans and ensures the realisation of such argumentative, dis-cursive, and metacognitive phases, and that combines questioning, enjoying and suffering, acting, and thinking in a targeted way can, in my view, be understood as “educative teaching” in the true sense of the word (on the distinction between
“educative” teaching and merely “informative” teaching – or even “preaching”–
see Ramseger, 1991).