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Research Article Volume 8 Issue 1
The construction of scientific explanations in the classroom: an analytical framework based on typological and topological meanings
Guillermo Cutrera
Received: July 03, 2025 | Published: August 20, 2025
Citation: Cutrera G. The construction of scientific explanations in the classroom: an analytical framework based on typological and topological meanings. Open Access J Sci. 2025;8(1):169-177. DOI: 10.15406/oajs.2025.08.00261
Abstract
This paper addresses a persistent challenge in science education: students’ difficulty in transitioning from macroscopic observations to explanations based on microscopic models. To analyze this problem, the perspectives of typological and topological meanings are adopted. Through a qualitative case study, the behaviour of gases, as understood by secondary school students (13-14 years old), is examined in depth. The main contribution of this research is the development and application of an innovative analytical framework structured in four interrelated dimensions: categorization, relations, temporal, and integration. This framework proves to be a novel and powerful tool for identifying and characterizing the tensions that arise in students’ processes of meaning-making. The results reveal that the most critical tension manifests in the temporal dimension, where everyday language, which favours discrete categories, is insufficient to express the continuity of physical processes. These findings have significant implications for teaching practice, suggesting the need to design specific pedagogical scaffolds that make these tensions explicit and help students construct scientific explanations that coherently integrate the different levels of description.
Keywords: school scientific explanations, typological and topological meanings, science education, qualitative research
©2025 Cutrera. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.