The Article
Assistant Professor David Fortus and colleagues Charles Dershimer and Joe Krajcik (University of Michigan), Ronald W. Marx (University of Arizona), and Rachel Mamlok-Naaman (Weizmann Institute of Science) describe design-based science (DBS) and evaluate whether significant science knowledge was constructed during consecutive enactments of three DBS units.

Discussion
The authors describe design-based science as a pedagogy in which the goal of designing an artifact contextualizes all curricular activities. Design is viewed as a vehicle through which scientific knowledge and real-world problem-solving skills can be constructed. The creation of artifacts is not viewed as a culminating experience; instead, the experiences lie at the heart of the DBS curricula. They then describe their study of 92 high-school students who participated in the consecutive enactments of three different DBS units. The development of the students’ scientific knowledge was assessed through posters and models constructed during the curricular enactments and by identical pre- and post-instruction written tests. What the researchers found was that the students showed considerable gains compared with the pretests, while the models and posters showed applications of the newly constructed knowledge in solving a design problem. The authors conclude that the positive results support efforts being made to restructure school science around inquiry-based curricula in general and design-based curricula in particular.

What It Means to You
What approach do teachers in your district use in teaching science? Is design the end product of the learning, the culminating project? Or is design an integral part of the learning from the beginning?

For More Information
Fortus, D., Dershimer, R.C., Krajcik, J., Marx, R.W. & Mamlok-Naaman, R. (2004). Design-based science and student learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(10), 1081–1110.

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