首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
相似文献
 共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 31 毫秒
1.
Understanding bonding is fundamental to success in chemistry. A number of alternative conceptions related to chemical bonding have been reported in the literature. Research suggests that many alternative conceptions held by chemistry students result from previous teaching; if teachers are explicit in the use of representations and explain their content-specific forms and functions, this might be avoided. The development of an understanding of and ability to use multiple representations is crucial to students’ understanding of chemical bonding. This paper draws on data from a larger study involving two Year 11 chemistry classes (n = 27, n = 22). It explores the contribution of explicit instruction about multiple representations to students’ understanding and representation of chemical bonding. The instructional strategies were documented using audio-recordings and the teacher-researcher’s reflection journal. Pre-test–post-test comparisons showed an improvement in conceptual understanding and representational competence. Analysis of the students’ texts provided further evidence of the students’ ability to use multiple representations to explain macroscopic phenomena on the molecular level. The findings suggest that explicit instruction about representational form and function contributes to the enhancement of representational competence and conceptual understanding of bonding in chemistry. However, the scaffolding strategies employed by the teacher play an important role in the learning process. This research has implications for professional development enhancing teachers’ approaches to these aspects of instruction around chemical bonding.  相似文献   

2.
Concreteness fading has been proposed as a general instructional approach to support learning of abstract mathematics and science concepts. Accordingly, organizing external knowledge representations in a three-step concrete-to-idealized sequence should be more beneficial than the reverse, concreteness introduction, sequence. So far, evidence for the benefits of concreteness fading come mainly from studies investigating learning of basic mathematics concepts. Studies on learning natural science concepts are scarce and have not implemented the full three-step-sequence. In an experimental classroom study (N = 70), we compared concreteness fading and concreteness introduction in high school science education about electromagnetic induction using a detailed assessment. Furthermore, we explored whether these sequences differentially affect the use of the different representations during instruction. Both sequences were equally effective and there were no differences in using the representations. We discuss why our results question the proposed advantages of concreteness fading and highlight conceptual differences and learning goals across domains.  相似文献   

3.
Because of the multimodal nature of learning, doing and reporting science, it is important that students learn how to interpret, construct, relate and translate scientific representations or, in other words, to develop representational competence. Explicit instruction about multimodal representations is needed to foster students’ representational competence in the classroom. However, only a handful studies have surveyed how representations are actually used in science classes. This might be because of the fact that economical instruments for assessing the use of representations in classrooms are not available. To bridge that gap, an instrument was developed, field-tested in biology classes with 175 and 931 students, respectively, and analysed using exploratory and (multilevel) confirmatory factor analyses. Results supported an instrument with six scales and 21 items at the individual and classroom levels covering the following dimensions: (1) interpretation of visual representations, (2) construction of visual representations, (3) use of scientific texts (verbal representations), (4) use of symbolic representations, (5) number of terms used in class, and (6) the extent to which active social construction of knowledge is possible in the class. The scales showed satisfactory discriminant validity and reliability at each level. Further applications of this instrument for researchers and teachers are discussed.  相似文献   

4.
Whether through the use of online-only or hybrid/blended formats, colleges and universities across the country are increasingly utilizing online platforms as a medium for the delivery of instruction. At the same time, we know little about how student learning outcomes are related to students’ engagement with online instructional formats. In particular, few studies have evaluated online learning in community colleges, and fewer yet have employed an experimental or quasi-experimental design to do so. In this research, we use propensity score matching to compare learning gains between community college students enrolled in blended courses, (courses that combine online instructional delivery with traditional classroom-based instruction) with gains experienced by students receiving only classroom-based instruction. Among students enrolled in blended courses, we also consider which aspects of student use of online instructional materials are most strongly associated with student learning. While some evidence has suggested significantly poorer outcomes for community college students enrolled in online-only courses, our results suggest that students enrolled in blended courses perform similarly, if not better, relative to students in a traditional instructional setting. Implications for practice and research are discussed.  相似文献   

5.
6.
Representational competence is a target of novel learning environments given the assumption that improved representational competence improves learning in science. There exists little evidence, however, that improving representational competence is positively correlated with learning outcomes across science disciplines. In this report, we argue that the previously reported weak relationships between representational competence and science learning outcomes have resulted from designs that do not explicitly analyze the discipline‐specific skills related to the representational competence construct. Here, we demonstrate through a detailed analysis of students' representation use that at least two demonstrated skills comprising representational competence (e.g., construction and selection) are not strongly related to improved conceptual understanding in the domain. We discuss the implications of these results for the design of future learning environments that aim to improve learning through improved representational competence.  相似文献   

7.
Traditionally, perceptual learning in humans and classical conditioning in animals have been considered as two very different research areas, with separate problems, paradigms, and explanations. However, a number of themes common to these fields of research emerge when they are approached from the more general concept of representational learning. To demonstrate this, I present results of several learning experiments with human adults and infants, exploring how internal representations of complex unknown visual patterns might emerge in the brain. I provide evidence that this learning cannot be captured fully by any simple pairwise associative learning scheme, but rather by a probabilistic inference process called Bayesian model averaging, in which the brain is assumed to formulate the most likely chunking/grouping of its previous experience into independent representational units. Such a generative model attempts to represent the entire world of stimuli with optimal ability to generalize to likely scenes in the future. I review the evidence showing that a similar philosophy and generative scheme of representation has successfully described a wide range of experimental data in the domain of classical conditioning in animals. These convergent findings suggest that statistical theories of representational learning might help to link human perceptual learning and animal classical conditioning results into a coherent framework.  相似文献   

8.
Contextualizing science instruction involves utilizing students' prior knowledge and everyday experiences as a catalyst for understanding challenging science concepts. This study of two middle school science classrooms examined how students utilized the contextualizing aspects of project‐based instruction and its relationship to their science learning. Observations of focus students' participation during instruction were described in terms of a contextualizing score for their use of the project features to support their learning. Pre/posttests were administered and students' final artifacts were collected and evaluated. The results of these assessments were compared with students' contextualizing scores, demonstrating a strong positive correlation between them. These findings provide evidence to support claims of contextualizing instruction as a means to facilitate student learning, and point toward future consideration of this instructional method in broader research studies and the design of science learning environments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 79–100, 2008  相似文献   

9.
Dealing with representations is a crucial skill for students and such representational competence is essential for learning science. This study analysed the relationship between representational competence and content knowledge, student perceptions of teaching practices concerning the use of different representations, and their impact on students' outcome over a teaching unit. Participants were 931 students in 51 secondary school classes. Representational competence and content knowledge were interactively related. Representational aspects were only moderately included in teaching and students did not develop rich representational competence although content knowledge increased significantly. Multilevel regression showed that student perceptions of interpreting and constructing visual-graphical representations and active social construction of knowledge predicted students' outcome at class level, whereas the individually perceived amount of terms and use of symbolic representations influenced the students' achievement at individual level. Methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of representational competence in classrooms.  相似文献   

10.
The purpose of this paper is to examine how instruction in scientific writing in a university oceanography course communicated epistemological positions of this discipline. Drawing from sociological and anthropological studies of scientific communities, this study uses an ethnographic perspective to explore how teachers and students came to define particular views of disciplinary knowledge through the everyday practices associated with teaching and learning oceanography. Writing in a scientific genre was supported by interactive CD‐ROM which allowed students to access data representations from geological databases. In our analysis of the spoken and written discourse of the members of this course, we identified epistemological issues such as uses of evidence, role of expertise, relevance of point of view, and limits to the authority of disciplinary inquiry. Implications for college science teaching are drawn. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 691–718, 2000  相似文献   

11.
As part of a long‐term research study to enhance science learning, this paper reports on an exploratory study aimed at identifying initial beliefs and practices of a group of teachers and students (Years 4–6) in Australia when the students engaged with multiple representations of the same science concepts. There is growing recognition in science education research that students need to understand and link different representational modes, such as graphic and verbal modes, in learning to think and act scientifically. This exploratory study used a multi‐site case‐study approach employing qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings indicated that while teachers used various modes to engage students and assess learning, they were not systematic in their focus on student integration and translation across modes. The study found that various factors affected students’ understanding of different modes, and that students who recognised relationships between modes demonstrated better conceptual understandings than students who lacked this knowledge.  相似文献   

12.
13.
There has been extensive research on children’s understanding of evaporation, but representational issues entailed in this understanding have not been investigated in depth. This study explored three students’ engagement with science concepts relating to evaporation through various representational modes, such as diagrams, verbal accounts, gestures, and captioned drawings. This engagement entailed students (a) clarifying their thinking through exploring representational resources; (b) developing understanding of what these representations signify; and (c) learning how to construct representational aspects of scientific explanation. The study involved a sequence of classroom lessons on evaporation and structured interviews with nine children, and found that a focus on representational challenges provided fresh insights into the conceptual task involved in learning science. The findings suggest that teacher‐mediated negotiation of representational issues as students construct different modal accounts can support enriched learning by enabling both (a) richer conceptual understanding by students; and (b) enhanced teacher insights into students’ thinking.  相似文献   

14.
In this paper we exemplify how a social semiotic approach to pupils’ multimodal texts (texts which draw on and make available to the senses a range of resources, including the visual, material, and actional) can provide a way into understanding learning. We suggest that learning can be seen as a transformative process of sign making. Specifically, we suggest that materiality (use of frame, shape, texture, colour, and imported objects) can be seen as one expression of how pupils engage with knowledge and learning. In order to demonstrate this we focus on year seven (11 year old) pupils’ visual representations of cells in two science classrooms at a London girls school. We argue that the range of representational resources available within visual communication (spatial relations, materiality, etc.) enabled the expression of kinds of meaning which would have been difficult, or perhaps impossible, in language. We conclude that visual and linguistic modes of expression have different potentials for meaning making, and therefore different potentials for learning.  相似文献   

15.
Educational stakeholders across the globe are demanding science education reform that attends simultaneously to culturally diverse students’ needs and promotes academic excellence. Although professional development programs can foster science teachers’ growth as culturally responsive educators, effective supports to this end are not well identified. This study examined associations between specific Science Teachers are Responsive to Students (STARTS) program activities and United States high school life science teachers’ understanding and enactment of culturally responsive science teaching. Findings suggest: (a) critically examining their practices while learning of students’ needs and experiences enabled teachers to identify responsive instructional strategies and relevant science topics for culturally responsive teaching; (b) evaluating culturally responsive exemplars while identifying classroom-based needs allowed teachers to identify contextually appropriate instruction, thereby yielding a robust understanding of the purpose and feasibility of culturally responsive science teaching; and (c) by justifying the use of responsive and reform-based instructional strategies for their classrooms, teachers made purposeful connections between students’ experiences and science instruction. We propose a set of empirically based design conjectures and theoretical conjectures to generate adaptable knowledge about preparing culturally responsive science teachers through professional development.  相似文献   

16.
Prior research shows that representational competencies that enable students to use graphical representations to reason and solve tasks is key to learning in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains. We focus on two types of representational competencies: (1) sense making of connections by verbally explaining how different representations map to one another, and (2) perceptual fluency that allows students to fast and effortlessly use perceptual features to make connections among representations. Because these different competencies are acquired via different types of learning processes, they require different types of instructional support: sense-making activities and fluency-building activities. In a prior experiment, we showed benefits for combining sense-making activities and fluency-building activities. In the current work, we test how to combine these two forms of instructional support, specifically, whether students should first work on sense-making activities or on fluency-building activities. This comparison allows us to investigate whether sense-making competencies enhance students’ acquisition of perceptual fluency (sense-making-first hypothesis) or whether perceptual fluency enhances students’ acquisition of sense-making competencies (fluency-first hypothesis). We conducted a lab experiment with 74 students from grades 3–5 working with an intelligent tutoring system for fractions. We assessed learning processes and learning outcomes related to representational competencies and domain knowledge. Overall, our results support the sense-making-first hypothesis, but not the fluency-first hypothesis.  相似文献   

17.
The present article discusses the design and impact of computer‐based visualization tools for supporting student learning and representational competence in science. Specifically, learning outcomes and student representation use are compared between eight secondary classrooms utilizing The Connected Chemistry Curriculum and eight secondary chemistry using lecture‐based methods. Results from the quasi‐experimental intervention indicate that the curriculum and accompanying visualization tool yield only small to modest gains in student achievement on summative assessments. Analysis of student representation use on pre‐ and post‐assessments, however, indicate the students in Connected Chemistry classrooms are significantly more likely to use submicroscopic representations of chemical systems that are consistent with teacher and expert representation use. The affordances of visualization tools in inquiry activities to improve students' representational competence and conceptual understanding of content in the science classroom are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 1137–1158, 2011  相似文献   

18.
ABSTRACT

Research suggests that it is challenging for elementary students to develop conceptual understanding of trait variation, inheritance of traits, and life cycles. In this study, we report on an effort to promote elementary students’ learning of hereditary-related concepts through scientific modelling, which affords opportunities for elementary students to generate visual representations of structure and function associated with heredity. This study is part of a four-year design-based research project aimed at supporting students’ learning about life science concepts using corn as a model organism. Study data were collected during the implementation of a project-developed, multi-week, model-based curriculum module in eight third-grade classrooms located in the Midwestern United States. Through mixed methods research, we analysed video recorded observations of curriculum implementation, student artefacts, and student interviews. Results illustrate epistemic dimensions of model-based explanations (MBEs) for heredity that students prioritised, as well as significant variation in students’ MBEs in 2 of the 8 classrooms. While findings show neither students’ content knowledge nor model-based instruction associated with their MBEs, qualitative differences in teachers’ curriculum enactment, and more general approaches to science instruction, may help explain observed differences. Implications are discussed for curriculum and instruction in support of students’ MBE for heredity-related concepts.  相似文献   

19.
This research examined the relationship between content instruction and the development of elementary teacher candidates' understanding of conceptual change pedagogy. Undergraduate students (n = 27) enrolled in two sections of a science methods course received content instruction through either traditional or conceptual change methods, followed by instruction about conceptual change pedagogy. Candidates were interviewed pre- and postinstruction about their content and pedagogical knowledge and also wrote conceptual change lessons. Twelve of the 27 subjects were videotaped teaching in the field. Results indicate that prior to instruction, most candidates had weak content knowledge and held traditional pedagogical conceptions. After instruction, students in the conceptual change group had significantly larger gains in their content knowledge than those in the traditional group, gave qualitatively stronger pedagogical responses, and used conceptual change strategies more consistently in practice. These results indicate that personal experience of learning science content through conceptual change methods facilitated the development of understanding and use of conceptual change pedagogy in teaching practice. Thus if conceptual change methods are to be incorporated into teacher candidates' repertoire, science content courses that students take prior to teacher education should be taught using conceptual change pedagogy. In addition, courses in science education should use pedagogy more in line with that taught in methods courses.  相似文献   

20.
Visual representations play a critical role in enhancing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. Educational psychology research shows that adding visual representations to text can enhance students’ learning of content knowledge, compared to text-only. But should students learn with a single type of visual representation or with multiple different types of visual representations? This article addresses this question from the perspective of the representation dilemma, namely that students often learn content they do not yet understand from representations they do not yet understand. To benefit from visual representations, students therefore need representational competencies, that is, knowledge about how visual representations depict information about the content. This article reviews literature on representational competencies involved in students’ learning of content knowledge. Building on this review, this article analyzes how the number of visual representations affects the role these representational competencies play during students’ learning of content knowledge. To this end, the article compares two common scenarios: text plus a single type of visual representations (T+SV) and text plus multiple types of visual representations (T+MV). The comparison yields seven hypotheses that describe under which conditions T+MV scenarios are more effective than T+SV scenarios. Finally, the article reviews empirical evidence for each hypothesis and discusses open questions about the representation dilemma.  相似文献   

设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号