Can research on science learning and instruction inform standards for science education?

We contrast the current science education reform effort with the reforms of the 1960s and suggest how the current effort could be enhanced. We identify insights from recent research that we believe can inform the reform process, in particular, to reach all science students and also impart a cohesive view of science. We propose an alternative models view of scientific explanation and show how this view would contribute to reforms of (1) course goals, (2) social aspects of science learning, (3) instructional practices, and (4) roles for technology.This paper summarizes discussions and debates that the authors have had over the last few years. The dialogue stems, in part, from our joint participation in the American Educational Research Association Special Interest Group on Education in Science and Technology (AERA SIG:EST) leadership. This paper communicates the spirit of our thinking and does not necessarily reflect the view of SIG:EST, or any other organization.We gratefully acknowledge the support of National Science Foundation Grant MDR-9253462 in work related to this paper. We appreciate helpful comments from Eileen Lewis and the Computer as Learning Partner group.This material is based upon research supported by the National Science Foundation under grant RED-9155744. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.     

Issues in Component Computing: A Synthetic Review

This paper provides a review of the rhetoric behind the component movement in educational software, and a critical analysis and synthesis of issues underlying the movement. We draw on case studies of several significant recent component projects in order to assess claims and to uncover and examine issues that are less often considered. While our empirical base cannot definitively answer all the questions raised, we hope to bring some clarity and some empirically based judgments to bear on how a promising technological innovation can best serve educational ends. Our study led to a focus on three critical issues: (1) the nature of the environment in which components are configured and used; (2) the extent of modifiability that is necessary for effective re-use of components; (3) how the work of designing components and component configurations is distributed among people with different competencies.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Component Computing in Education

The use of professional software is an integral part of a student's education in the mining engineering curriculum at The Pennsylvania State University. Even though mining engineering represents a limited market across U.S. educational institutions, the goal still exists for using this type of software to enrich the learning environment with visual elements and, therefore, enhance the students' ability to understand design principles in a more systematic manner. All of the students are required to develop a complete mine-design project, from conception to completion, which includes the selection of appropriate mining components and systems to meet desired needs. However, the question that is often asked is whether or not the desired benefits from using such software can be justified in terms of initial cost, and programming time required for both the instructor and students of small engineering programs, such as mining engineering. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the experiences of faculty and students with typical professional software tools available for mining-engineering educational programs, and to assess their ability to enhance active teaching and learning through computer-based problem solving in a manner which is cost effective for a small-enrolment engineering major.     

Reflections on Component Computing from the Boxer Project's Perspective

The Boxer Project conducted the research that led to the synthetic review "Issues in Component Computing." This brief essay provides a platform from which to develop our general perspective on educational computing and how it relates to components. The two most important lines of our thinking are (1) the goal to open technology's creative possibilities to the broadest range of people possible, and (2) to do so on the basis of a single architecture, a computational medium, that includes the possibility of constructing and modifying interactive, dynamic constructions by all participants.     

What changes in conceptual change?

This paper has two aims. First, it reviews literature about conceptual change and about the study of concepts more broadly. The principal claim is that much prior work has suffered from inexplicitness and imprecision in terms of what constitutes a concept. Second, we introduce a theory of one particular type of concept. A coordination class is a systematic collection of strategies for reading a certain type of information out from the world. We identify both structural components and performance properties of coordination classes. Using this theory, we analyse protocol data from a student with respect to the difficult concept of force in Newtonian mechanics.     

What Students Should Know About Technology: The Case of Scientific Visualization

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Starting with the focal question, “what should students know about technology?” we describe and illustrate a way of designing educational...