Refining a learning progression of energy

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a revised learning progression for the energy concept and initial findings on diverse progressions among subgroups of sample students. The revised learning progression describes how students progress towards an understanding of the energy concept along two progress variables identified from previous studies – key ideas about energy and levels of conceptual development. To assess students understanding with respect to the revised learning progression, we created a specific instrument, the Energy Concept Progression Assessment (ECPA) based on previous work on assessing students’ understanding of energy. After iteratively refining the instrument in two pilot studies, the ECPA was administered to a total of 4550 students (Grades 8–12) from schools in two districts in a major city in Mainland China. Rasch analysis was used to examine the validity of the revised learning progression and explore factors explaining different progressions. Our results confirm the validity of the four conceptual development levels. In addition, we found that although following a similar progression pattern, students’ progression rate was significantly influenced by environmental factors such as school type. In the discussion of our findings, we address the non-linear and complex nature of students’ progression in understanding energy. We conclude with illuminating our research's implication for curriculum design and energy teaching.     

The explanatory role of spontaneously generated analogies in reasoning about physiological concepts

Analogical reasoning is increasingly recognized as an important instrument for promoting conceptual change in science learning. This study characterized students' and physicians' spontaneous use of analogies in reasoning about concepts related to the mechanical properties of cardiovascular physiology. The analogies were made in response to questions at different levels of abstraction from basic physiology to clinical problems. The results indicate that analogies generated by subjects facilitated explanations in a number of ways. These include creating coherent representations in novel situations, bridging gaps in understanding, and triggering associations which result in modified explanations. Subjects at different levels of expertise used analogies differently. The more expert subjects used analogies to facilitate articulation and communication; that is, to illustrate and expand on their explanations. Novices and advanced medical students used more between‐domain analogies to explain all categories of questions. This is less evident in physicians' responses to pathophysiological and clinical problems. The paper discusses ways in which analogies can be used productively, and identifies factors that can lead to a counter‐productive use of analogies resulting in misconceptions and erroneous explanations.     

Social interaction and the use of analogy: An analysis of preservice teachers' talk during physics inquiry lessons

Analogies have been argued to be central in the process of establishing conceptual growth, making overt connections and carryover into an intended cognitive domain, and providing a generative venue for developing conceptual understanding inherent in constructivist learning. However, students' specific uses of analogies for constructing arguments are not well understood. Specifically, the results of preservice teachers' knowledge gains are not widely studied. Although we would hope that engaging preservice science teachers in exemplary lessons would assist them in using and generating analogies more expertly, it is not clear whether or how such curricula would affect their learning or teaching. This study presents an existence proof of how preservice science teachers used analogies embedded in their course materials Physics by Inquiry. This fine‐grained analysis of small group discourse revealed three distinct roles of analogies including the development of: (a) cognitive process skills, (b) scientific conceptual understanding, and (c) social contexts for problem solving. Results suggest that preservice teachers tend to overgeneralize the analogies inserted by curriculum materials, map irrelevant features of analogies into collaborative problem solving, and generate personal analogies, which counter scientific concept development. Although the authors agree with the importance of collaborative problem solving and the insertion of analogies for preservice teachers' conceptual development, we believe much more needs to be understood before teachers can be expected to construct and sustain effective learning environments that rely on using analogies expertly. Implications for teacher preparation are also discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 443–463, 2003     

Language Games in the Ivory Tower: Comparing the Philosophical Investigations with Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game

Wittgenstein explores learning through practice in the Philosophical Investigations by means of an extended analogy with games. However, does this concern with learning also necessarily extend to education, in our institutional understanding of the word? While Wittgenstein's examples of language learning and use are always shared or social, he does not discuss formal educational institutions as such. He does not wish to found a ‘school of thought’, and is suspicious of philosophy acting as a theory that can be applied to other areas of life. While Wittgenstein's focus on developing independent thinking was neither individualistic nor anti‐institutional, it did, however, focus on developing the thinking of his students rather than theorising about how this could be applied on a large scale. An analysis of Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game will help us to pick up where Wittgenstein deliberately left off—thinking about how (or if) one can institutionalise learning methods that encourage thinking for oneself. These differences in the writers’ treatment of education will become evident in the differences between their game analogies. While language‐games combat our ‘craving for generality’ in Philosophical Investigations, the Glass Bead Game represents this craving, and how it manifests itself throughout history in disciplines other than logic and philosophy of language. It also represents the potential for institutions to become insular, exclusive communities.     

The Support Model for interactive assessment

The two most common models for assessment involve measuring how well students perform on a task (the quality model), and how difficult a task students can succeed on (the difficulty model). By exploiting the interactive potential of computers we may be able to use a third model: measuring how much help a student needs to complete a task. We assume that every student can complete it, but some need more support than others. This kind of tailored support will give students a positive experience of assessment, and a learning experience, while allowing us to differentiate them by ability. The computer can offer several kinds of support, such as help with understanding a question, hints on the meanings of key concepts, and examples or analogies. A further type of support has particular importance for test validity: the computer can probe students for a deeper explanation than they have so far given. In subjects like geography or science, markers often would like to ask ‘yes, but why?’, suspecting that students understand more than they have written. We describe a series of studies in which students were given a high level task as an oral interview and then as an interactive computerised assessment with varying types of support. Implications of the support model for future modes of assessment are discussed.     

Enculturation and Understanding: some differences between sixth formers’ and graduates’ conceptions of understanding in History and Science

Abstract

Understanding is often a highly valued learning outcome in higher education. If new students’ conceptions of understanding are inappropriate or are different to the conceptions of those who teach them, the quality of the students’ learning may suffer. This study compared aspects of sixth formers’ and graduates’ conceptions of understanding in History and Science. It was found that some new students are likely to begin higher education with conceptions that could point them towards a kind of learning that is not what is expected. For instance, in both history and science, there may be a tendency to emphasise the acquisition of factual information. Perhaps less obvious would be students who tend to over‐simplify events in History and those who undervalue simplification and idealisation of a situation in Science. Aspects of the conceptions of understanding that such new students may bring to their courses are described. Some strategies for developing students’ subject‐specific conceptions are also outlined.     

Describing the cognitive landscape in learning and teaching about forces

This study focuses on student and in-service primary teachers learning about balanced and unbalanced forces in a range of contexts and identifies significant features of the learning process from the learners' perspectives. It describes how students are able to apply key ideas about forces from their own learning about floating and sinking to a range of contexts including structures and aspects of motion. In exploring how understanding is constructed important implications are raised with respect to the pedagogic knowledge required of teachers in the Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum in the UK.     

Truth or fiction: problems of validity and authenticity in narratives of action research

Abstract

In what sense is it helpful to argue that the truth criteria for research reports can be understood through analogies with creative narratives, such as novel and short stories? One argument is that both are founded on the notion of constructing the ‘authentic’ voices of those whose world is presented in the narrative. Problems with the concept of authenticity are explored, and a further analogy is presented, between the principles of action research and those of ‘modernist’ fiction, in order to show how narratives can avoid simply reproducing the authoritarian texts of realist fiction and of hierarchically organised research.     

Pedagogy of Learning and Teaching: A Phenomenographic Perspective from Selected Classrooms in Rural South Africa

Abstract

Classroom practitioners are expected to facilitate effective learning under the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in South Africa. During this facilitation process, educators are required to become more resourceful in terms of their learning and teaching strategies. This article is based on a case study – within the phenomenographic paradigm – of Grade 9 educators and learners in four rural schools in North West, South Africa. The study focussed on a specific economics and management sciences (EMS) topic relating to the understanding of the value or price determination of the South Africa rand on the foreign exchange market. The article is divided into three parts: firstly, the concepts of phenomenography and the variation theory of learning are explored and constituted as the conceptual framework; secondly, educators’ experiences with the variation theory as a classroom resource for learning; and thirdly, the impact of educators’ classroom experiences with the variation theory on learners’ quantitative and qualitative learning outcomes. The results showed an improvement in the learners’ understanding of the EMS topic studied.     

Authentic,dialogical knowledge construction: a blended and mobile teacher education programme

Background: Knowledge construction and technology have been identified as critical for an understanding of the future of teacher education. Knowledge is discovered, applied and created collaboratively from authentic starting points. Today’s new mobile and blended learning environments create increased opportunities for such processes, including learner-centred approaches, authenticity and dialogical knowledge construction. However, teaching still requires appropriate learning design and structuring. The presented study explored, and was designed and implemented, using the ‘Dialogical Authentic Netlearning Activity’ (DIANA) pedagogical model, which is seen as one of the learning designing models for existing digital, open and mobile learning environments.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and opportunities inherent in the adoption of the DIANA model and to examine student-teachers’ reflections concerning authentic and dialogical knowledge construction. The focus is on the learning process.

Sample: Participants were 63 student-teachers who were following the study module ‘Networks in Vocational Education’ at the School of Professional Teacher Education, in Hämeenlinna, Finland.

Design and methods: This qualitative study uses a deductive content analysis to discern relationships between the data and the existing theory. The data for this study were drawn from an online questionnaire and participants’ self-reflective accounts.

Findings: The results indicate that achieving deep-oriented learning through dialogical actions is the most challenging part of using the DIANA model. Some of the students had difficulty understanding the concept of ‘authenticity’.

Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest enhancing learner-centred scaffolding and guidance, particularly at the outset of the learning process. In addition, methods that develop dialogical skills and competences ought to be integrated into teacher education as extensively as possible, in order to make collaborative work and problem-solving genuinely dialogical and equal.     

An investigation of Taiwanese high school students’ science learning self-efficacy in relation to their conceptions of learning science

Background: Past studies have shown significant associations between students’ conceptions of learning science and their science learning self-efficacy. However, in most of the studies, students’ science learning self-efficacy has often been measured by a singular scale.

Purpose: Extending the findings of these studies, the present study adopted a multi-dimensional instrument to assess Taiwanese high school students’ science learning self-efficacy and investigate the relationships with their conceptions of learning science.

Sample: A total of 488 Taiwanese high school students (265 male and 223 female) were invited to participate in this survey.

Design and method: All the participants responded to the Conceptions of Learning Science (COLS) questionnaire regarding ‘Memorizing’, ‘Testing’, ‘Calculating and practicing’, ‘Increase of knowledge’, ‘Applying’ and ‘Understanding and seeing in a new way’ and the Science Learning Self-Efficacy (SLSE) instrument, including ‘Conceptual understanding’, ‘Higher-Order cognitive skills’, ‘Practical work’, ‘Everyday application’ and ‘Science communication’.

Results: The path analysis results derived from the structural equation modeling method indicated that, of all five SLSE dimensions, the ‘Understanding and seeing in a new way’ COLS displayed as a positive predictor, while the ‘Testing’ COLS was a significant negative predictor. The ‘Applying’ COLS item can only positively contribute to the SLSE dimensions of ‘Higher-Order thinking skills’, ‘Everyday application’ and ‘Science Communication’.

Conclusions: In general, students in strong agreement with learning science as understanding and seeing in a new way or the application of learned scientific knowledge are prone to possess higher confidence in learning science. However, students who consider learning science in terms of preparing for tests and examinations tend to hold lower science learning self-efficacy.     

Collaborative Reasoning on Self‐Generated Analogies: Conceptual Growth in Understanding Scientific Phenomena

Abstract

This study investigated fourth graders’ self‐generated analogies, that is, own analogies giving self‐explanations — opposed to analogies provided by a teacher — and the effects of their collaborative reasoning and arguing over these analogies on individual understanding of three scientific phenomena concerning air pressure. At the beginning the children were individually asked to give their own explanations, explicitly encouraged to think of something similar which could help them to understand better what they had experienced. Then, divided in small groups they were asked to compare their accounts to collabora‐tively reach a shared explanation of each phenomenon. At the end, the children were again individually asked to give their explanations. The data underwent both a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The first showed that the children, on the basis of their alternative representations of what air could do, produced and used their own analogies as self‐explanations both to learn the new material and communicate their understanding to others. Moreover, the analysis of the collaborative reasoning and arguing developed in small group discussions revealed that through steps of critical opposition and co‐construction, the learners negotiated and renegotiated meanings and ideas to share a new common knowledge based on the recognition of more appropriate analogies supporting more advanced explanations. The quantitative analysis showed that socio‐cognitive interaction in small groups was fruitful as the children significantly progressed on an individual plane in giving their own explanations of each phenomenon as well as in recognizing the similarities between the three phenomena. In addition, the qualitative data showed evidence that the children were able to express metacognitive awareness of their conceptual growth. Finally, educational implications have been drawn.     

Classroom conceptual change: philosophical perspectives

Researchers of students’ concepts and conceptual change frequently draw analogies to the history of science. The analogy is generally presented when comparing students’ scientific concepts to similar ones in the history of science. We have tried to show the importance of this analogy on a higher level ‐‐ that of understanding the process of conceptual change in general among students.

This article outlines a number of lines in the philosophy of science and analyses differences between the perspectives of a number of broadly constructivist positions which have developed during this century.

The analysis is used to clarify the theoretical basis on which research into student conceptual change is conducted and interpreted.     

User or student: constructing the subject in Edtech incubator

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ about education and learning emanating from the Edtech research and development sector. MindCet, the first Edtech incubator in Israel, aims to bring ‘disruptive innovation’ to the educational field, mainly by bringing in tech start-ups with their problem solving culture and practices. This centre acts as an intermediary between techno-business and education. Based on Biesta’s notion of ‘the new language of learning,’ my research shows how the learning imagined and constructed in techno-business production casts the student as a ‘user.’ I will argue that the construction of learners as ‘users,’ not ‘students,’ is crucial to understanding education technology production and discourse. This user-focused understanding of learning has implications for the commodification and depoliticization of education, and is an important factor in neo-liberal educational reforms and venture philanthropy interventions, both globally and locally.     

Shifting the focus from motivated learners to motivating distributed environments: a review of 40 years of published motivation research in Distance Education

ABSTRACT

This article reviews motivation research published in Distance Education since 1980, highlighting the major foci of investigation and reflecting on past findings. A major trend was that past research has focused predominantly on learners’ motivational attributes using sociocognitive models of motivation. We therefore have developed a good understanding of motivating variables such as self-efficacy and their power in engaging learners. However, this can be problematic because sociocognitive research situates motivation within an individualistic paradigm with limited attention given to examining whether learning supports and instructional designs in open and distance learning mediate and motivate learning engagement. Building on the review, this article seeks to shift the research attention from whether learners are motivated to crafting an open and distance learning system that is motivating and engaging by tapping into multiple motivation sources available beyond the confines of an individualistic frame.     

A critical examination of informal learning spaces

ABSTRACT

Globally, the future of the higher education sector is under increasing scrutiny, and questions are being asked about the relevance of universities as traditional sites of teaching and learning. In an effort to adapt to the complexities that beset the higher education environment, universities are exploring the utility and benefits offered through informal learning spaces. However, the emergence of informal learning spaces raises important questions regarding student behaviours and ‘learning’, including the dichotomous positioning of the categories ‘formal’ and ‘informal’. This article highlights a tendency in the literature to treat informal learning spaces in a romanticised and overdetermined way. It challenges some of the popular imaginaries of these spaces as free, open and democratising in terms of students’ use, technological affordances, and a largely unchallenged emphasis on forms of community and collaboration as if they are unproblematic. Indeed, a persistently undefined ‘social’ quality attributed to informal learning settings, coupled with a focus on design and technology elements, elides the possibility of negative social practices such as exclusion and marginalisation. Moreover, empirical treatments of these spaces are dominated by quantitative methods that rely on deterministic cause and effect models, including normative understandings of academic success, as a measure of effectiveness. If universities are to proceed in better understanding these learning sites and the meanings and practices students bring to them, new perspectives incorporating more critical, interpretive qualitative approaches that give primacy to understanding the ways in which these spaces might reproduce marginalising or exclusionary social practices are required.     

Expert novice similarities and instruction using analogies

Evidence is presented indicating that spontaneously generated analogies can play a significant role in expert problem solving. Since not all analogies are valid, it is important for the subject to have a way to evaluate their validity. In particular, this paper focuses on an evaluation strategy called bridging that has been observed in solutions to both science and mathematics problems. Spontaneous analogies have also been documented in the problem solving of students. The shared natural use of analogies for unfamiliar problems is an expert‐novice similarity.

Some of the strategies observed in experts were incorporated in a teaching technique for dealing with students’ preconceptions in mechanics. Students taught via these units achieved large gain differences over control groups. Thus non‐deductive reasoning strategies used by experts can give us valuable clues concerning instructional strategies for science students. This complements the prior focus in the literature on expert novice differences with a focus on expert novice similarities.     

High school students’ approaches to learning physics with relationship to epistemic views on physics and conceptions of learning physics

Background and purpose : Knowing how students learn physics is a central goal of physics education. The major purpose of this study is to examine the strength of the predictive power of students’ epistemic views and conceptions of learning in terms of their approaches to learning in physics. Sample, design and method : A total of 279 Taiwanese high school students ranging from 15 to 18?years old participated in this study. Three questionnaires for assessing high school students’ epistemic views on physics, conceptions of learning physics and approaches to learning physics were developed. Step-wise regression was performed to examine the predictive power of epistemic views on physics and conceptions of learning physics in terms of their approaches to learning physics. Results and conclusion: The results indicated that, in general, compared to epistemic views on physics, conceptions of learning physics are more powerful in predicting students’ approaches to learning physics in light of the regression models. That is, students’ beliefs about learning, compared with their beliefs about knowledge, may be more associated with their learning approaches. Moreover, this study revealed that the higher-level conceptions of learning physics such as ‘Seeing in a new way’ were more likely to be positively correlated with the deep approaches to learning physics, whereas the lower-level conceptions such as ‘Testing’ were more likely to positively explain the surface approaches, as well as to negatively predict the deep approaches to learning physics.     

Higher education teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development: implications for interdisciplinary pluralistic teaching

Abstract

An interdisciplinary and pluralistic approach to teaching and learning has been proposed as one solution to the lack of a consensus definition of sustainable development (SD). For teachers, such an approach requires an awareness of the interconnections among different dimensions of SD and their underlying value-based assumptions. In this article, we investigate whether higher education teachers’ conceptions of SD are consistent with these aims. We present the results of our interviews with five university teachers who are experienced in interdisciplinary SD in Finland. Our findings show that despite the teachers’ rich conceptions of cultural sustainability, including a variety of topics, concepts and value questions, their understanding of economic sustainability is rather limited and sketchy. We suggest that universities support the teachers’ social and peer learning based on reflections on unclear concepts and emerging SD ideas.