Scientific research is a dynamic process of studying phenomena through creative and systematic investigation. This process integrates new information with existing scientific knowledge. At the core of scientific inquiry is the ability to grapple with uncertainty, an essential part of learning and discovery.
Understanding Uncertainty
Uncertainty is the experience of being unsure. When managed productively, it can be a powerful motivator in the learning process. It encourages students to identify gaps in their understanding, develop solutions, and gain deeper insights into their own thinking processes. Eve Manz describes "productive uncertainty" as an approach where students engage beneficially with scientific uncertainty (Manz, 2018).
Navigating Uncertainty for Sensemaking
For students to make sense of scientific concepts, they must first recognize and explore their uncertainties. By acknowledging what they do not know, students can use this uncertainty as a resource to drive deeper understanding and engagement. At SEP, we focus on a few areas we believe are important for bringing uncertainty into the classroom.
- Relationships: Build relationships that allow students to comfortably explore and voice their scientific and epistemic uncertainties. This requires creating a environment where vulnerability in the face of uncertainty is recognized and valued.
- Student Discourse & Argumentation: Create opportunities for collaborative sensemaking through dialogic practices.
- Quality Curriculum: Curriculum that connects to students’ lives to foster student engagement.
- Student Agency: Empower students to contribute, evaluate, shape their learning, and enact change.
By developing these structures, teachers can turn uncertainty into a productive force in the classroom, enhancing students' learning experiences and scientific understanding.
"Stupidity in Science" Seminar
Students often misunderstand the term 'scientific research.' Instead of recognizing it as a process that requires persistence in the face of setbacks and a tolerance for ambiguity, they sometimes equate it with simply writing a 'research paper' on a topic. By engaging students in a text-based discussion of the article 'The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research', they can gain a deeper understanding of 'productive stupidity' and the importance of scientists actively seeking out what they do not know or understand in order to discover new concepts. Using evidence found in the text, students consider how success is defined in scientific research. They also discuss how scientific pursuits may require persistence despite setbacks and a tolerance for not knowing much of the time. Students then relate their experiences of not knowing to the social nature of scientific research. This type of text-based discussion is known as a Socratic Seminar.
By incorporating this lesson at the beginning of the semester, students will be better equipped to identify and recognize 'uncertainty' as a productive and essential part of scientific learning throughout the course. By emphasizing the struggle with uncertainty as a valuable resource for sensemaking, students can productively and collaboratively navigate that struggle.
This activity comes from the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR)'s unit "The Social Nature of Scientific Research".
Resources
NWABR Teacher Guide for "Stupidity" in Science: A Text-based Discussion (PDF)
In this lesson, students participate in a text-based discussion of the article “The importance of stupidity in scientific research” by Martin Schwartz. Using evidence found in the text, students consider how success is defined in scientific research. They also discuss how scientific pursuits may require persistence despite setbacks and a tolerance for not knowing much of the time. This type of text-based discussion is known as a Socratic Seminar.
Video: NWABR Socratic Seminar in Science
Socratic Seminars can be helpful for fostering discussions in science classrooms, particularly around a text of interest. In the two high school biotechnology classes featured, students discuss an article entitled "Stupidity in Science” from Lesson 2 of NWABR's Social Nature of Scientific Research curriculum. Teachers Jodie Spitze and Dianne Thompson share important points to consider when conducting a seminar.
Text: The importance of stupidity in scientific research (modified)
by Martin A. Swartz | Journal of Cell Science 2008 121: 1771 Modified from the original article. This text is used with students for a text-based socratic seminar in “NWABR Teacher Guide for "Stupidity" in Science” and the “UW-CNT Teacher Guide for Productive Uncertainty in Science and Engineering“. This text focuses on a story of a researcher and their experience of “stupidity” in their Ph.D. program.
Other Lessons/Activities Highlighting Productive Uncertainty
In the Uncertainty in Science and Engineering by Sadie Frady, student engage in class discussion on what it means to be productively uncertain in a science classroom. Students then fill out a chart identifying different behaviors and actions on a spectum of certain to uncertain and productive to unproductive.
In the Fred Hutch SEP Lesson: A Twist on Strawberry DNA Extraction, students are challenged to design their own protocol to extract DNA from strawberries. Students grapple with the uncertainty of what to do when presented with the opportunity to build an original protocol rather than performing a pre-designed protocol with known results.
Many SEP Units incorporate productive uncertainty explicitly including Elephants Conservation: Ivory Cache, Intro to Cancer: Leukemia & Hina's Story and Frontiers in Cancer: Immunotherapy.
Resources
UW-CNT Teacher Guide for Productive Uncertainty in Science and Engineering
What does it mean to be comfortable with uncertainty? In this lesson, students will read an article on productive stupidity (uncertainty) and engage in a class discussion on what it means to be productively uncertain in a science classroom. They will end the lesson by filling out a chart that goes over the different combinations of behavior seen in professional science and classroom settings.
A Twist on Strawberry DNA Extraction
This lesson challenges students to design their own experimental protocol to extract DNA from strawberries. By developing their own protocol and presenting their findings in a lab meeting, students learn the importance of making claims with evidence and reasoning and communicating those claims.
Other Resources for Productive Uncertainty
STEM Teaching Tool #60: Designing ‘productive uncertainty’
We want students to engage from the earliest ages in science and engineering practices with sincere curiosity and purpose. Science investigations can be viewed as “working through uncertainty.” This paper encourages an approach that emphasizes productive uncertainty focuses on how uncertainty might be strategically built into learning environments so that students establish a need for the practices and experience them as meaningful ways of developing understandings.
Slide Deck: Productive Uncertainty PD
Slides from Dr. Jeanne Chowning’s talk on “Productive Uncertainty and Curriculum Development” from the NIH/NIGMS SEPA SciEd 2021 Conference. This talk was presented to educators and curriculum designers about how to incorporate productive uncertainty in the classroom.
Designing for and Analyzing Productive Uncertainty in Science Investigations
This paper by Eve Manz (2018) explores methods to design and analyze learning environments in which uncertainty is incorporated into students’ activity to support the development of science practices and content understandings. Data used for this paper are from a 2nd grade classroom.
Chen, Y., Jordan, M., Park, J., & Starrett, E. (2024). Navigating student uncertainty for productive struggle: Establishing the importance for and distinguishing types, sources, and desirability of scientific uncertainties. Science Education, sce.21864. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21864
Manz, E. (2018). Designing for and Analyzing Productive Uncertainty in Science Investigations. Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age: Making the Learning Sciences Count. 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), London, England.