Design and Practice of Cultivating Primary School Students' Scientific Explanation Ability Based on the POE Strategy

Abstract

Against the backdrop of rapid technological advancement and accelerating knowledge iteration, scientific explanation ability, as a core component of scientific literacy, has become a fundamental competence influencing a nation’s innovation capacity. This study, grounded in conceptual change theory and the theory-ladenness of observation, adopts a design-based research approach and integrates the Predict–Observe–Explain (POE) strategy with the Claim–Evidence–Reasoning (CER) framework. Through three iterative cycles, a “POE–CER” dual-cycle instructional model was constructed, and a three-month quasi-experimental study was conducted with two fourth-grade classes in a primary school in Beijing.The results indicate that this model, through a three-level cognitive scaffold comprising concept activation (prediction stage), evidence processing (observation stage), and knowledge reconstruction (explanation stage), significantly improves students’ scientific explanation ability, particularly in the dimensions of evidence use and logical reasoning, while no statistically significant difference was observed in claim construction. The model was found to be particularly effective for boys with strong interest in scientific inquiry and high classroom participation, but showed limited effectiveness for students with weaker foundational knowledge.