Scientific Practices II

Unit Overview

This Unit is a continuation of “Scientific Practices I” with a focus on deepening students’ understanding of scientific inquiry and scientific reasoning, and further developing their data analysis capabilities. Students will learn how to construct hypotheses and verify them through different scientific inquiry methods. Students will master the concepts of independent variables, dependent variables and control variables as well as design controlled experiments to identify casual relationships. By comparing the accuracy and precision of experimental results, students will learn how to evaluate the reliability of the conclusions. For the learning of scientific reasoning, this Unit introduces how to use data to infer general trends and construct models or theories for explaining phenomena scientifically. For example in the activity of “perform practical work to find out the relationship between temperature and thermal expansion of liquids”, students will observe and compare the changes in liquid volume at different temperatures, organise the data using charts, and construct different models to explain their observations. This process will help students understand the concept of “evidence and models”. In addition, reading historical stories about famous scientists conducting scientific investigations could facilitate students to understand the key role of scientific inquiry in building scientific knowledge. Teachers can also arrange problem-solving exercises in scientific reasoning and design fair tests and other activities to cultivate students’ scientific attitudes, laying a solid knowledge foundation for future scientific learning. Teachers can also design other appropriate learning and teaching activities to enable students to develop and master the following skills: a) using specific data to induce a general trend, conclusion or model b) using a set of general observations, trend or model to deduce a specific result c) making inference to the best possible explanation to the observed phenomenon d) making informed decisions based on the probability of phenomenon occurring e) formulating a hypothesis based on the observed phenomenon g) identifying independent variables, dependent variables and control variables h) setting up a controlled experiment that minimises the effect of confounding factors to identify causation i) choosing from alternative experimental methods or improving the method for a scientific investigation j)commenting the reliability of a scientific measurement or a scientific investigation