The purpose of this study was to classify tentative explanations of biological phenomena, Subjects were 8 biology teachers and 2 general science teachers in high schools. Two explanation-generating tasks were developed and administered to the subjects: the maple leaves and the flight of birds. After being presented with the phenomena of the task., the subjects were asked to generate scientific questions and tentative explanations to the questions. The teachers generated 466 tentative explanations. The tentative explanations were classified into 2 types: mechanical explanation and teleological explanation. In addition, mechanical explanations were classified into 3 sub-types: hypothesis, conjecture, and prediction. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for teaching and learning in science education.
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