The Effect of Incorporating Social Role Assignment and Strategic Translanguaging Scaffolding into Conceptual Change Instruction on Lebanese Secondary School Students’ Understanding of the Concept of Gene

Abstract

Teaching for conceptual understanding is an important goal of science instruction. Many strategies have been proposed in the literature for how to help learners develop conceptual understanding of challenging science topics. Conceptual change instruction (creating dissatisfaction in prior conceptions and enhancing the intelligibility, plausibility, and fruitfulness of the scientific conceptions) has been found to be effective. However, this kind of instruction requires active classroom engagement on the part of learners which can be particularly challenging for English language learners. This study examines the challenges of implementing conceptual change instruction with Lebanese secondary school students learning science in English, a language that is not their native language. The study will also investigate if and how scaffolding students’ participation in classroom discourse during conceptual change instruction using social role scaffolding and strategic translanguaging will improve students' conceptual understanding.

As such, the research questions of this study are: 1) What are the challenges of implementing conceptual change instruction in a Lebanese secondary school context where English is used as the language of instruction in science? 2) Does incorporating social role scaffolding along with strategic translanguaging into conceptual change instruction improve students’ conceptual understanding in the domain of gene compared with conceptual change instruction alone? 3) How does scaffolding in the form of social role assignment and strategic translanguaging support learners’ participation in instructional activities in conceptual change instruction and facilitate the development of conceptual understanding of the concept of gene? To answer these, a mixed-method, quasi-experimental approach was used. The participants were two classes of grade 11 students from two different private co-educational schools in Baalbek, Lebanon that serve a middle to low socio-economic status community. One class was taught a unit on gene using conceptual change instruction alone and the other was taught using conceptual change instruction with the addition of social role scaffolding and strategic translanguaging. Pre- and post-assessments of conceptual understanding allowed the two instructional approaches to be compared using an ANCOVA (answering Question 2). Qualitative data collection and analysis (interviews thematic analysis and classroom discourse analysis) were used to answer Questions One and Three.

The findings indicate that implementing conceptual change instruction in an English-medium classroom presents linguistic and participation-related challenges that limited students’ ability to engage in conceptual reasoning and express their understanding of gene. Quantitative results indicate a trend favoring the experimental group for within-generation process reasoning in the concept of gene. Qualitative findings show that social role scaffolding and strategic translanguaging support students’ participation in classroom discourse, enable meaning-making, and contribute to the development of conceptual understanding. The findings indicate that implementing conceptual change instruction in multilingual science classrooms is challenging, particularly when instruction is conducted in English and participation is not supported. They point to the need to integrate structured participation and translanguaging within conceptual change instruction and to address both linguistic and participation-related demands during instruction.