The quote, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand" is widely-cited in the education literature. It emphasizes the importance of experiential learning, highlighting that active participation leads to deeper understanding. In the context of science education in general and physics education in particular the quote has been cited to emphasize the importance of learning by doing that is conceptualized in various terms such as inquiry, practical work, hands-on activities, laboratory work, and so on[1]. In physics education, learning by doing can be termed as ‘doing physics.’ The term ‘doing physics’ can refer to participating in knowledge construction in the field of physics, either by physicists or by physics learners. In this paper, ‘doing physics’ refers to knowledge construction by physics learners.

Historically, learning by doing physics entails physics inquiry and laboratory work. Inquiry and laboratory work have been utilized as ways to provide learners with opportunities to actively participate and engage in learning processes. In particular, physics inquiry and laboratory work have been emphasized as an essential feature of physics education[2]. As such there has been a great deal of research on improving physics learning through inquiry and laboratory work. In the call for focused paper collection of the journal Physical Review Physics Education Research, Etkina et al. describe the current state of physics inquiry and laboratory work for instruction as the following:

Through this call, a variety of research studies have been published addressing topics such as laboratory work involving digital technology, group dynamics, assessment, and experiment-specific cognition such as reasoning about uncertainty. While the call and collected studies demonstrate physics educators’ interest in and efforts to improve physics inquiry and laboratory work as both method and goals for physics education, there is less discussion on what constitutes physics inquiry and laboratory work and why they are to be taught in formal education. The topic has philosophical, cultural and historical aspects and also reflects the relatively recent development of science curriculum in general. In this paper, I address the discussion on what constitutes physics inquiry and laboratory work, followed by empirical analysis of teaching practices in South Korea at the secondary school level.

Inquiry and laboratory work have been in formal physics education for more than a century[1]. As such there has been a great deal of debate on the nature of those concepts and implementation in educational settings[3-6]. The first half of the period, the terms ‘scientific method’ and ‘process skills’ have been conceptualized as ways to teach inquiry and laboratory work in simplified steps, or considered skills that were presumably learnable[1, 3, 7]. As context-free and science discipline-general concepts, process skills such as measuring, observing, and inferring have been conceptualized as general procedures that scientists perform in their research activities[8]. For mass education on scientific inquiry methods, the complex process of scientific inquiry has been simplified and formed into stepwise procedures for students to follow (e.g., generating hypothesis, performing and reporting experiments in sequence). In doing so, the process approach has been criticized for being easily reduced to mindless actions and failing to bring meaningful learning experiences[3, 9]. Furthermore, the process approach exposes students to a distorted view of science and an image of science inquiry process as free of a scientific knowledge base[1, 4, 9].

Given the criticism of the trivialized reductionist process approach that gives distorted images of science, the notion of teaching science inquiry as it is practiced by scientists has been promoted since the last half of the 20th century[5, 10]. In his influential paper, Schwab criticized the emphasis on science as accepted knowledge in science education and promoted teaching science as inquiry as well as teaching about inquiry with the purpose of educating students on a realistic view of science[5, 6]. For Schwab, science inquiry refers to the various methods scientists use to investigate and understand the natural world. These methods vary across different branches of science. His call for inquiry teaching has influenced science education for several decades while his definition of inquiry for science education has been debated[3, 11]. Heavily influenced by Schwab[5], the U.S. National Science Education Standards define science inquiry as a way of studying the natural worlds by both scientists and science learners.

This definition demonstrates an assumption that science inquiry can be experienced by students in formal education settings. Examples of inquiry activities in schools in comparison with scientists’ methods of investigation demonstrate possibilities for students in schools to experience authentic scientific investigations that are similar to those of scientists[12]. Similarly, undergraduate freshmen research experiences have been proven effective for providing authentic scientific inquiry experiences[10, 12, 13].

The U.S. Standards suggest that inquiry activities that upper secondary school students are to be expected to experience include ‘Identify questions and concepts that guide scientific investigations’, ‘Design and conduct scientific investigations’, ‘Use technology and mathematics to improve investigations and communications’, ‘Formulate and revise scientific explanations and models using logic and evidence’, ‘Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and models’, ‘Communicate and defend a scientific argument’ [10, p. 19].

In addition, the U.S. Standards address the issue of distorted image of science by including specific content for students to learn about scientific inquiry. Upper secondary school students are expected to learn the following about scientific inquiry [10, p. 20 adapted]:

• (Inquiry subject) Scientists usually inquire about how physical, living, or designed systems function.

• (Inquiry goal) Scientists conduct investigations for a wide variety of reasons.

• (Science and technology) Scientists rely on technology to enhance the gathering and manipulation of data.

• (Science and mathematics) Mathematics is essential in scientific inquiry.

• (Scientific mindset) Scientific explanations must adhere to criteria such as: a proposed explanation must be logically consistent; it must abide by the rules of evidence; it must be open to questions and possible modification; and it must be based on historical and current scientific knowledge.

• (Inquiry results and communication) Results of scientific inquiry — new knowledge and methods — emerge from different types of investigations and public communication among scientists.

These characterizations of scientific inquiry have limitations in that they are more about ‘science for scientists’ without explicit discussion on epistemic process, i.e., ‘how we know, what we know’[3]. Furthermore, the notion of inquiry falls short of keeping pace with the development in science and science studies. For example, the role of experiments needs to shift from testing of hypotheses as the privileged method based on hypothetico-deductive views of science to one of many methods to build, test, revise models for descriptions, explanations, and predictions[14-17]. As such, laboratory work for students needs to extend to various types of activities, not limited to controlled experiments. Furthermore, the social and cultural aspects of science inquiry have been left out in the U.S. standards.

Informed by the science studies reported since the mid-20th century, the view of science inquiry has changed[4, 11, 18]. The notion of science inquiry in science education has been revisited and renamed as scientific practices in science education research. For examples, the revised U.S. national science education standards (Next Generation Science Standards, NGSS) replaced the traditional notion of science inquiry with scientific and engineering practices highlighting the following eight items: (1) asking questions and defining problems, (2) developing and using models, (3) planning and carrying out investigations, (4) analyzing and interpreting data, (5) using mathematical and computational thinking, (6) constructing explanations and designing solutions, (7) obtaining, evaluating and communicating information[19].

Whereas the items of scientific practices appear to be similar to the aforementioned elements of science inquiry, there is a great deal of difference in their conceptual underpinnings. The term ‘practice’ gains its prominence in sociology as a way to integrate mind with behaviors and to understand socially shared actions. In most practice theories, the term practice refers to “embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding” [20, p. 11]. By referring to actions as embodied shared understanding mediated by materials, the notion of practice overcomes the dualism between mind and body, between human and material, and between individualism and communalism. In other words, the emphasis on practices entails encouraging students’ participation in materially-mediated mindful activities following the norms and rules shared by scientific community. Given the norms and rules by scientific community, however, practices may vary:

Science inquiry as socially shared actions can be understood through the notion of practices: actions may look idiosyncratic if viewed individually (for each person, for each science branch or for each individual research group), but the idiosyncrasy is limited within the norms and rules of science community. Thus, socially shared practices can be identified within diverse ways of doing.

The diversity within shared practices opens up possibility for personal and material agency. Students may be required to learn the epistemic norms and rules of science community, but their ways of doing may vary depending on their capabilities as well as the materials mediating their learning. For example, students may engage in asking scientific questions by learning what constitutes scientific questions while their questions may diverge from real science because of the context of learning (grades, learning settings, etc.). Nonetheless, students may be positioned to participate in scientific practices of asking questions while they make decisions on what constitute scientifically valid and valuable questions. Regardless of the diversity of discussion processes and results, the criteria of decisions will be shared within their own learning communities and reflect the norm of scientific communities.

The emphasis on scientific practices highlights neglected components of the traditional notion of inquiry: the epistemic processes, social processes, and material mediation[18]. In terms of epistemic and social processes, having students participate in scientific practices entails that they are involved in developing epistemic rules and norms as members of science learning community. For example, what counts as scientific questions and which questions should be selected for further investigation need to be negotiated within the group as a community while their negotiations are guided by the norms of science represented in the curriculum[22, 23]. These kinds of epistemic decisions are to be made by students if they are to participate in the epistemic and social processes of scientific practices. Teachers should position their students as epistemic agents who are making critical decisions in the processes of investigations. Furthermore, if students are to develop proficiency in scientific practices they should have such epistemic experiences routinely in science learning rather than have them be special events[16, 24].

Material mediation of scientific practices highlights the important role of tools and materials of science inquiry including laboratory tools. Several works of science studies demonstrate that scientific practice in modern science is a collective endeavor in which scientists, engineers, institutions and materials interact[25, 26]. In particular, technical tools and materials could have emerging properties that are not intended in their designs or inventions but manage to transform the practice of science by working as new agents. The Michelson interferometer might be a representative example of such a transformation[27, 28]. Initially designed to determine the velocity of light and then to measure the motion of the Earth through ether, Michelson interferometer produced null results. On the other hand, the interferometer has been applied to other areas such as astronomy and measurement, which allowed him to win the Nobel prize. Furthermore, the failed results paved the way for Einstein's theory of special relativity. The Michelson interferometer exemplifies how the role of experimental tools and/or experiments are not fixed to their original theory or their original intention, but are fluid and evolve with context and time.

As an example of transformative agency of materials, Pickering explained how trains and railways change people’s perspective[26]. Whereas they are invented and designed to transport people and freight, the panoramic view gained through the windows of fast-moving trains brought a new vision of landscape. Again, human interaction with the material world brings out emergent phenomena and new experiences.

These examples illustrate that students’ engagement in scientific practices through tools or laboratory experiments might involve flexible use of tools and instrument, which could result in providing transformative experiences of emerging properties and/or phenomena.

Taken together, the emphasis on practice highlight student engagement in various activities in teams with opportunities for epistemic agency and material agency. Thus, in physics education students need to have opportunities for epistemic practices of physics in which they construct knowledge through asking questions, designing investigations with diverse materials in need, and arguing for their knowledge claims based on data. Most of all, students should have the authority to make epistemic decisions such as which questions to investigate and which answers are valid for their questions, and engage with materials and laboratory tools that are more adaptable to their manipulations or experimental designs[29]. In doing so, students may effectively become proficient in scientific practices as well as gaining new insights that motivate them to further their physics learning.

The idea of inquiry for teaching science has long been part of the science curriculum worldwide, but there has been criticism of authenticity of scientific inquiry in the classroom because the culture of school is different from the culture of science[30-32]. Students are used to the culture of school where teachers are positioned as epistemic authority and students’ main goal is to meet the expectation of the teacher or the curriculum rather than epistemic goals of sensemaking[23, 33]. This criticism might be valid in the traditional schooling, and aforementioned process approach is the case in point. School science as a social institute dictates actions of those belong to the structure[34]. Successful students in schools are those who understand teachers’ and curricular expectations and know how to act as students such as doing homework, completing lab procedures in time and so on. Within this traditional structure of schooling, inquiry and laboratory work have been different from real science because they are designed as classroom activities.

The emphasis on scientific practices, thus, calls for transformation of the culture of science classrooms in which students engage in doing science as epistemic agents making school science in line with scientific practices. Such efforts have been made for the past two decades in science as well as physics education. In particular, the notion of scientific sensemaking has emerged as a term encompassing students’ engagement in various scientific practices[35]. Scientific sensemaking can be defined as figuring out phenomena and explain them through coordination of knowledge and evidence[32, 35, 36]. By framing learning activities as sensemaking students can be positioned to generate their own knowledge claims to describe and explain phenomena under investigations. Furthermore, in sensemaking processes students have to evaluate and undergo iterative process of revising their explanations through argumentation[37]. Thus, sensemaking processes require student initiative and epistemic agency.

Odden and Russ have reviewed studies of sensemaking in science education and distinguished it from various terms such as thinking, explaining, argumentation, modeling, and so on[35]. In doing so, they have identified two key elements of sensemaking as practices: (1) building an explanation and (2) constructing new knowledge based on prior knowledge. Students may provide an explanation of a phenomenon but if that is not new to them, it is not sensemaking. It merely recapitulates existing knowledge without contributing to new understanding, i.e., sensemaking. Thus, not all science learning activities are sensemaking as much as not all learning activities are doing physics.

The authors also suggest the grainsize of the notion of sensemaking[35]. Students may engage in argumentation when they construct and refine their explanations in their groups. During such argumentation students may make sense of the topic, but not the entire argumentation is sensemaking. Similarly, students may discuss data analysis in their groups to make sense of the data, but not the entire data analysis is sensemaking. In this sense, sensemaking is a smaller unit than the eight scientific practices listed in the NGSS. As such, sensemaking may happen during students’ participation in each type of scientific practices.

A representative example can be found in Karelina and Etkina[38]. In the following excerpt from the paper, students are discussing whether friction can be ignored in their lab design:

As the students connect their prior experience to the current lab design task, they figure out that immeasurably small variable can be ignored. Deciding which variables to measure and which to ignore is a critical part of planning an investigation. The excerpt shows that students make such a decision as epistemic agents, which entails sensemaking.

Another example can be found in Kim and Kang where high school students experiment with simplified Michelson interferometer[39]. In their study, students were asked to set up a simplified interferometer with car rearview convex mirrors, slide glass and a laser pointer. Due to the use of convex mirrors, students were to observe concentric curricular patterns instead of typical interference patterns shown in the textbook. Furthermore, the patterns varied across groups depending on the setups, and sometimes both the teacher and students were confused by unexpected patterns. Thus, students had to figure out how to manipulate mirrors to get interference patterns as shown in interviews with students:

The excerpt demonstrates that students can have opportunities to make sense of how to manipulate lab equipment when data production is challenging. This seems to be authentic to real practices of experimental physicists[27, 28]. Furthermore, the study demonstrates material agency in that students experienced sense of beauty, accomplishment, pride, or feeling like a physicist. These emotional responses emerged through interactions with the challenging lab equipment [39, p. 263].

Few studies examined students’ sensemaking in relation to scientific practices[36]. In this section, examples of teachers’ strategies to facilitate students’ sensemaking are presented. In addition, missed opportunities of teachers’ facilitation are examined in order to draw implications for teaching physics for students’ sensemaking through scientific practices.

1. Data collection and analysis

To examine science teachers’ teaching strategies during students’ engagement in scientific practices, video recordings of five middle school teachers’ (4 females, and 1 male) classroom teaching of a unit were collected and analyzed. The teachers were recruited using both purposeful and convenient sampling methods to attain maximum variation. The teachers were from two medium-sized cities in South Korea. Their certification areas varied from life science, chemistry, and physics but all of them are certified to teach general science of middle school (grades 7–9). Among them, one female had 11 years of teaching (teacher AD) while the others had four or five years of teaching experience at the time of the study.

Each teacher video recorded one unit of science lessons, which ranged four to seven class periods (45 minutes each). A total of 1,080 minutes of recordings were collected and analyzed. Textbooks and student worksheets, if any, were collected and analyzed to complement the video data. From the recordings, 80 episodes of students’ involvement in scientific practices were identified and coded based on the eight practices highlighted in NGSS[19]. The diversity of scientific practices students engaged in those episodes varied across the teachers but on average students engaged in three to five different types of practices per lesson.

2. Analysis results

Among the 80 episodes of students’ involvement in scientific practices, only a few had evidence of students’ sensemaking in the video data. This was mainly because students had little opportunities to share their ideas in groups or in whole class discussion. Nevertheless, a few cases where teachers’ facilitation of students’ sensemaking were identified, and one missed opportunity for such facilitation was found.

Strategy 1. Using anchoring knowledge as stepping stones. Sensemaking occurs when students relate what they know to solving a problem. When engaging students in scientific practices, students’ prior knowledge can be used as anchors[40-42]. Thus, to engage students in sensemaking, teachers need to activate students’ prior knowledge relevant to the topic of instruction. In this example, the teacher activated students’ knowledge of similar triangles, which can anchor their learning of more complex idea.

In the beginning of a unit on Earth, teacher AD involved students in planning investigations in relation to measuring the size of the Earth. The teacher asked students to figure out how to measure the height of pyramid, and students connected their prior knowledge to figure it out.

Students shared their ideas and figured out that similar triangle ratios could be used. After students figured it out, the teacher stopped the discussion and moved on to the story of Eratosthenes’ measuring of the Earth’s circumference by showing science movie clips and elaborating the method using a diagram. Students’ knowledge of similar triangles used in a simpler form served as a stepping stone for a new topic. In the next lesson, students emulated Eratosthenes’ method of measuring the Earth using a globe. By anchoring students’ prior knowledge of similar triangles, the teacher easily introduced a topic that could have otherwise overwhelmed them.

Similarly, teacher CI asked students to compare iron fillings around magnets, which they likely observed in primary school science class, with their observations of compass needles around a current-carrying wire. By relating to past learning experiences, students easily figured out interpretations of their observations.

Strategy 2. Using analogies as collaborative meaning-making process. Using analogies is a well-known approach to model construction in science, and it has been used as effective science teaching strategies[40, 43, 44]. Whereas using analogies is one of key scientific practices it can serve as a pedagogical tool for engaging students in various scientific practices. For example, in the beginning of a laboratory activity about the law of conservation of mass during chemical reaction, teacher BJ used analogy to introduce the lab:

The teacher tried to explain atoms do not change in a chemical reaction by using objects that students are familiar with. In the dialogue, the teacher didn’t expect the answer ‘price’, but she incorporated it into the analogy since it didn’t change its purpose. In doing so, the student was positioned to be a part of meaning making process. The excerpt demonstrates that teacher-proposed analogies can be flexible and co-constructed with students when student inputs are taken into account, and teachers are open to variation. Such pedagogical use of analogies can be thought of as thinking tools for students’ sensemaking, with meanings emerging in discourse[43].

Strategy 3. Using everyday experiences as resources. In many instances, teachers used students’ ideas within an IRE (Initiation-Response-Evaluation) pattern. In this pattern, students who know what the teacher is looking for respond to the teacher’s questions, allowing the teacher to continue with the planned lessons[45]. In such an interaction, it is not evident that the other students quiet make sense of the dialogue. However, in the data a few cases emerged when teachers used students’ everyday experiences encouraging all students respond to the teacher, and thus many students in the classroom nodded or reacted simultaneously. For example, during an observation of pupillary light reflex teacher DK applied students’ daily experience and gained many reactions that indicated their sensemaking.

By encouraging all students to have bodily experience and gain an embodied understanding, the teacher acquired responses from many students and encouraged their sensemaking.

Many studies have promoted using students’ prior ideas as resources for making sense of new concepts[42, 46, 47]. To achieve effective and meaningful learning, teachers should actively engage all students by providing accessible experiences. This approach ensures that students can readily grasp new ideas and collaborate effectively with their peers.

Strategy 4. Highlighting reasoning rather than conclusions. Students’ understanding of the idea that scientific knowledge is open to questions and modifications has long been emphasized in science education[5, 12, 19]. Additionally, the notion of scientific knowledge as being socially constructed has been widely recognized in science studies and applied to recent science curricula[25, 48, 49]. When teachers are to deliver canonical science knowledge in schools, the idea could be limited to showing the history of science rather than science-in-the-making. In that sense, engaging students in scientific practices with explicit reflection on how scientific knowledge is constructed and modified is rarely seen in the classroom[50].

One episode identified in the data provides a case where scientific knowledge has less authority. The teacher CJ highlighted reasoning behind scientific practices and positioned scientific knowledge as one of many possible descriptions. In doing so, scientific knowledge and the teacher shared their epistemic authority with students. The following episode is after previous lesson in which each group of students investigated one planet of the solar system of their choice using the Internet and presented their findings on a poster.

In this episode, the teacher apparently positioned students as epistemic agents by acknowledging that any criteria can be used as long as they can group the planets. In doing so, students actively participated in suggesting their ideas while possibly categorizing solar planets in their minds. In doing so, the process of knowledge construction and students’ epistemic agency were valued as much as canonical knowledge.

Missed opportunity. One episode was identified as a missed opportunity in which student’s question could have led to a meaningful discussion or investigation for sensemaking. During a lesson on why seasons occur, a student asked a question after teacher’s explanation of the difference in the density of sunlight between summer and winter. The student’s question could have initiated an investigation to figure out the answer. However, the teacher repeated his explanations with an addition of drawings, and the student failed to make sense of it.

The teacher responded to the last part of the student’s question, “Why are their areas different?” and focused the difference of areas without connecting to the other part of the question. The student’s question, “aren’t all these lights the same?” needed the teacher’s attention. The student had difficulties in recognizing that it is the light per area that matters in seasonal differences. Magnifying glass related by the student could have been investigated to relate strength of light by comparing focused and not focused cases. Alternatively, a common experience of different strength of sunlight between noon (direct light) and late afternoon (tilted light) could have been used to respond to the student’s question. Without such fine-grained elaboration of the difference, the student in the episode failed to make sense of how different angles of entering sunlight creates seasons.

The episode of missed opportunity can be related to the notion of teacher noticing[51-54]. Recently, teacher noticing has emerged as important area of teacher professional competence. Teacher noticing refers to teachers’ in-the-moment thinking processes during teaching to identify important student thinking and reasoning and make decisions on how to respond to them in a way to facilitate students’ sensemaking. What is required for teachers is not only noticing of student ideas and underlying reasoning but also making sense of them and knowing how to respond to them in a way to facilitate students’ sensemaking.

Students’ prior conceptions or ideas has been reported in the literature and could be known to teachers through teacher education programs, professional development and their own teaching experiences[50, 51]. Thus, teachers might easily notice well-known alternative conceptions in student responses but how to respond to them is challenging. Furthermore, students’ intuitive ideas and reasonings underlying their alternative ideas are context dependent and require teachers’ careful attention and reflection-in-action[42, 46, 47]. Teachers need to be sensitive to students’ comments and questions and grab opportunities to address challenges they have in sensemaking.

In this paper, I have reviewed how the notion of physics inquiry and laboratory work has changed and elaborated on the recent emphasis on scientific practices in the literature on physics education as well as science education. The review has shown that students’ engagement in doing science or physics entails students’ epistemic agency while participating in scientific practices and sensemaking. Following the review, I have presented an empirical analysis of middle school science teachers’ facilitation, or lack thereof, of students’ sensemaking during scientific practices. The empirical analysis identified several strategies that effectively facilitated students' sensemaking during scientific practices and underscored the critical role of teacher noticing in supporting students’ sensemaking.

This paper highlights the notion of scientific practices and epistemic agency as key components of students’ doing physics, and it presents teacher noticing as a crucial teaching competence for facilitating students’ sensemaking.

The review discussion and empirical findings implicate a number of further research topics. While a number of scientific practices are promoted in the literature, scientific practices by definition, vary across contexts including school levels and topics for investigation. A few studies have suggested students’ progress in their proficiency in participating in specific scientific practices, but few have related this progress to students’ epistemic agency exercised as members of a learning community[32]. Further research on students’ progress in scientific practices in relation to their epistemic agency and contextual variations would provide insights into ways to facilitate students’ doing physics. Furthermore, it is imperative to conduct additional research on pedagogical strategies that facilitate students’ sensemaking in physics learning. This includes investigating the processes of students’ sensemaking, their strategies, and the ways teachers’ facilitation functions.