Fictional placemaking creating meaningful contexts for causal reasoning in secondary school biology education

In secondary science education, students often do not feel engaged with
the scientific concepts that are taught, which hinders conceptual learning.
This lack of engagement can be overcome by fictional placemaking.
Therefore, the purpose of our design-based research is to explore how
the creation and use of fictional places lead to meaningful contexts
providing opportunities for the learning of biology. Four design principles
were formulated from theories on: (1) pedagogy of place; (2) communities
of practice; (3) imaginative teaching; and (4) story-based learning. Based
on these principles a lesson series was designed in which students were
challenged to create societies living in domes on Mars as a fictional place.
This lesson series was conducted in a ninth-grade class (28 students) at
pre-university level. It was evaluated on the contribution of the design
principles to create a meaningful context for the learning of biology. This
research focuses on causal reasoning, which is a key competency in
biology. The analysis of artefacts of group work showed evidence that
students expressed different types of causal reasoning. Reflection on each
of the design principles made clear how fictional placemaking provides
opportunities for the development of students’ causal reasoning.