Background knowledge and the construction of a situational representation from a diagram

Comprehension of a diagram requires viewers to construct from its graphic constituents a mental representation that captures the situational entities and relationships referred to by the diagram. However, this implies viewers possess appropriate background knowledge concerning the depicted situation. Meteorologists' and non-meteorologists' mental representations were investigated using a three-stage card sorting task during which subjects generated hierarchical groupings of the graphic elements of an Australian weather map diagram. Cluster analysis indicated that the two subject groups differed fundamentally in the basis of their sorting behaviour. Subjects' justifications of the groupings suggested that non-meteorologists' mental representation of the diagram elements was primarily based upon domain-general, visuospatial characteristics whereas in meteorologists' representations, these characteristics were subservient to a domain-specific, situational interpretation of the graphic array. The findings indicate that background knowledge deficiencies may make it difficult for learners beginning study of a domain to construct suitable mental representations from domain-related diagrams.     

Diagram information and its organisation in memory: Exploring the role of skill and experience

Two contrasting methods of investigation were used to characterise the basis upon which the mental representation of a scientific diagram was organised in individuals having different levels of experience and skill in the interpretation of this type of diagram. Each of these methods is described and several important methodological issues are discussed. In the first method (the Card Sort method), subjects performed a three-stage grouping of diagram elements in a card sorting task that produced an hierarchical ordering of the information constituting the diagram. In the second method (the Copy-Recall method), subjects copied then produced drawn recall of a given diagram. Measurements of the sequence in which diagram elements were produced and the time intervals between each production were used to infer the underlying cognitive structuring involved in the mental representation of the diagram information. Questions are raised concerning the way resulting data can be analysed and interpreted most effectively. Specializations: Mental representation and processing of scientific diagrams, characteristics of explanatory diagrams, visual aspects of problem solving, instructional design.     

Dealing with graphic output from diagram processing tasks: Approaches to characterisation and analysis

The current relative lack of detailed knowledge about how learners interact with the types of diagrams used in instructional materials is partly due to the research difficulties in characterising the cognitive structures and processes involved in these interactions. One of these difficulties arises from the lack of research tools specifically designed for the collection and meaningful analysis of relevant data. This paper describes computer-based approaches developed to analyse and characterise graphic output produced during diagram processing tasks. Specializations: Mental representation and processing of scientific diagrams, characteristics of explanatory diagrams, visual aspects of problem solving, instructional design.     

Selectivity in Diagrams: reading beyond the lines

Diagrams are commonly used with beginning students of technical domains to introduce these learners to key aspects of the subject matter. Instructional benefit is intended to result from a diagram's simplification of the content into a highly selective form of graphic presentation. However, this selectivity may not benefit those lacking the domain‐specific knowledge necessary to construct from the diagram an appropriate mental representation of the depicted situation. A weather map diagram extension task compared the mental representation of subjects with high levels of knowledge in the domain of meteorology (meteorologists) with that of low knowledge subjects (non‐meteorologists). The meteorologists’ domain‐specific elaboration of the given markings suggested a mental representation that was not limited by the diagram's selectivity, but rather incorporated the broader meteorological situation implied by the diagram. In contrast, the non‐meteorologists’ domain‐general approach indicated a meteorologically impoverished mental representation that was largely driven by the given diagram's visuo‐spatial characteristics.     

Using Tree Diagrams as an Assessment Tool in Statistics Education

This study examines the potential of the tree diagram, a type of graphic organizer, as an assessment tool to measure students' knowledge structures in statistics education. Students' knowledge structures in statistics have not been sufficiently assessed in statistics, despite their importance. This article first presents the rationale and method for using tree diagrams as assessment tools in statistics education, followed by an empirical study examining the technical quality of tree diagram assessment. Thirty-seven university students enrolled in an introductory statistics course, and four statistics experts participated in the study. The results provide evidence of reliability and validity for the proposed function of using tree diagrams to measure knowledge structures in statistics education. As reliability evidence, the interrater reliability of tree diagram scoring is high (Pearson's r = .96); alpha coefficient of the 21 linked vertex pairs in tree diagrams is .89. As validity evidence, experts performed better than novices on the tree diagram assessment; students' performance with the tree diagram is significantly correlated with their performance on statistics achievement tests (Pearson's correlation coefficient r = .62); tree diagrams are sensitive to the discrepancies in students' knowledge structures, and most students considered tree diagrams helpful to their organization of statistics knowledge.     

“Reading” scientific diagrams: Characterising components of skilled performance

Conclusion The interpretation of scientific diagrams has been characterised as a complex process. This contrasts sharply with an apparently widespread view among producers and users of resources for science teaching that they are generally unproblematic and that their meaning is usually quite transparent. The continued currency of this view is a matter of concern, especially when resources for learning in science are now so heavily based on pictorial presentation. It is likely that students who are new to scientific diagrams as a pictorial genre will look at them in a manner that is quite different from the way they are seen by their teachers. What seems to a teacher to be a straightforward and clearly presented depiction of a scientific concept, process or structure may be a mysterious and impenetrable abstraction to a student. Whereas the teacher is able to identify readily the elements of a diagram and link them into a coherent, meaningful whole, the student may misunderstand what it is that is depicted and how the depicted entitles are related. A critical factor underlying such differences appears to be the extent and nature of the mental representation of student and teacher. Both of these aspects of the mental representation of scientific diagrams would probably have to be addressed if there are to be improvements in the development of students' diagram interpretation skills. It does not seem sufficient merely to give students a huge diet of diagrams and assume that the necessary reading skills are either present or will develop by themselves. Rather, a deliberate programme designed to develop well structured mental representations of scientific diagrams should accompany efforts to build up an extensive knowledge base about this highly specialised form of visual display. Such a programme should be accompanied by instruction that develops appropriate processing strategies that allow students to gain maximum value from the diagrams they encounter.     

Heuristic Diagrams as a Tool to Teach History of Science

The graphic organizer called here heuristic diagram as an improvement of Gowin’s Vee heuristic is proposed as a tool to teach history of science. Heuristic diagrams have the purpose of helping students (or teachers, or researchers) to understand their own research considering that asks and problem-solving are central to scientific activity. The left side originally related in Gowin’s Vee with philosophies, theories, models, laws or regularities now agrees with Toulmin’s concepts (language, models as representation techniques and application procedures). Mexican science teachers without experience in science education research used the heuristic diagram to learn about the history of chemistry considering also in the left side two different historical times: past and present. Through a semantic differential scale teachers’ attitude to the heuristic diagram was evaluated and its usefulness was demonstrated.     

Recall of the pattern,sequence, and names of concepts presented in instructional diagrams

Forty-one high school students studied a series of five circuit diagrams. These either showed the electronic components as standard symbols or as squares. Each component was labelled and numbered. Students either had to remember the pattern of the elements in the diagram and draw it from memory, or they had to remember the elements in sequence. It was found that students who saw diagrams with symbols performed better on the sequence task and worse on the pattern task than the students who saw the diagrams with squares, whose performance on the two tasks was the opposite. A subsequent experiment found that requiring the students to label the elements in the diagrams did not interfere with their ability to remember the patterns of the components. It was concluded that students' success in completing tasks that require holistic or analytic processing depends upon the amount of detail in the elements in instructional diagrams. It was also suggested that designers of diagrams used to teach science can exercise some control over whether students process the information holistically or analytically by varying the amount of detail in the diagrams' elements.     

The Structural Design Features of Large Texts

A framework for analyzing the structure of large expository texts is specified, based on notions from the rhetoric. Rhetoric books used to teach freshman composition classes have been surveyed for common patterns, and two separate text structures have been identified. One is the functional structure, which helps the reader construct a coherent mental representation; the other is the rhetorical structure, which organizes content. The framework specifies elements and linkages for the two structures that typically are present in the well-designed text. The usefulness of the framework is demonstrated with the analysis of a sample text, Modern Rhetoric (Brooks & Warren, 1972).     

Concept mapping and the cartography of cognition

Since concept maps are designed to find out what the learner knows about a subject and are, in effect, maps of cognition, this article synthesizes relevant facts, concepts, and principles from cartography and applies them to concept mapping. The metaphor of the map and its applicability for representing scientific knowledge are discussed. The context of concept mapping is presented and suggestions for successful application of the technique in the science classroom are offered. Finally, researchers are invited to conduct studies that investigate the graphic representation of scientific knowledge in order to create, evaluate, and improve the graphics and graphic metacognitive tools (such as concept mapping) which are used in science teaching.     

Changes in the representation of dynamism in fifth grade children

According to research on mental representation carried out in the Piaget tradition (Galifret-Granjon, 1981; Piaget & Inhelder, 1966), the cognitive processes of decentration in terms of the states (initial and final) and anticipation (of change and movement) form the basis of the reconstruction of a dynamic situation. Children centered primarily on the initial and final states have great difficulty creating a mental representation of a dynamic situation. This study, based on a socio-constructivist approach (Gamier, 1985), seeks to help children develop these two fundamental processes. The pedagogical analysis focuses first on the observation of children's behaviour while playing ball in a group and then on the graphic representation of their actions drawn by the children after each play session. We saw in the children's game definite changes stemming from decentration. We also noticed that the children were centering less on the states in their graphic production which became increasingly rich in codes.     

Effects of discussion representation: comparisons between social and cognitive diagrams

An online discussion facilitates students’ higher order thinking in online classes, especially when adopted with the instructor’s guidance. The current experimental study examined the effects of two different discussion representation tools (social and cognitive diagrams) on students’ discussion behaviors. The social diagram emphasized interactivity of participants by illustrating who posted messages and who replied. The cognitive diagram described how discussion topic evolved by summarizing main topics discussed. Thirteen graduate students enrolled in an online graduate course participated in the study. While analyzing five instructional cases, students were asked to discuss each case in a group that the instructor assigned randomly. For each case, one group was provided with the social diagram whereas the other with the cognitive diagram. Major findings revealed both tools facilitated online discussion activities as the instructor intended: the social diagram turned out to promote socially desirable responses while the cognitive diagram produced more cognitively desirable responses. Further studies on how the two types of discussion diagrams can be integrated in online discussions will be needed.     

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND ONLINE INQUIRY-BASED SCIENCE READING: EVIDENCE FROM EYE TRACKING

This study employed eye-tracking technology to examine how students with different levels of prior knowledge process text and data diagrams when reading a web-based scientific report. Students’ visual behaviors were tracked and recorded when they read a report demonstrating the relationship between the greenhouse effect and global climate change in 2 diagrams and 4 textual sections. Based on the pretest scores, 13 participants were categorized into high and low prior knowledge (PK) groups. Eye-tracking measures including the total reading time, total fixation duration, and total regression number on each area of interest of the 2 groups were compared. A heat map was further used to show the overall visual distribution of each group. In addition, the inter-scanning transitions between the textual and graphical information of the 2 groups were compared and further confirmed by the patterns of the scan paths. The results revealed that overall students spent more time reading the textual than the graphical information. The high PK students showed longer fixation durations and more regressions on the graphics than the low PK students. Meanwhile, the high PK students showed more inter-scanning transitions than the low PK students not only between the text and graphics but also between the 2 data diagrams. This suggests that the high PK students were more able to integrate text and graphic information and inspect scientific data which is essential for online inquiry learning. This study provides eye-tracking evidence to show that low PK students have difficulties integrating scientific diagrams with expository texts and inspecting scientific data diagrams that are commonly shown in websites. Suggestions are made for future studies and instructional design for online inquiry-based science learning.     

Diagrammatic Literacy in Secondary Science Education

Students in secondary science education seem to have difficulties with understanding diagrams. The present study focused on explanatory factors that predict students’ difficulties with process diagrams, i.e., diagrams that describe a process consisting of components that are related by arrows. From 18 compulsory national Biology exams of secondary school pre-university students, all process diagram tasks (n?=?64) were included in corpus. Features of the task, student, and diagram were related to the difficulty of that particular task, indicated by the cohort mean exam score. A hierarchical regression analysis showed main effects for (1) the cognitive task demand, (2) the familiarity of the components, and (3) the number of components in a diagram. All these main effects were in the expected direction. We also observed interactions. Within the category of tasks with a high cognitive demand, tasks about a diagram of which students have low prior content knowledge were more difficult than tasks about a diagram of which students have high prior content knowledge. Tasks with a high cognitive demand about a diagram with familiar arrows were, surprisingly, more difficult than tasks with a high cognitive demand about a diagram with unfamiliar arrows. This latter finding might be attributed to compensation for task difficulty by the large number of components in the diagrams involved. The final model explained 46 % of the variance in exam scores. These results suggest that students have difficulties (1) with tasks that require a deeper understanding when the content is new, (2) with diagrams that use unfamiliar component conventions, and (3) with diagrams that have a small number of components and are therefore probably more abstract.     

Signals foster multimedia learning by supporting integration of highlighted text and diagram elements

Two experiments investigated how signals foster learning from text and diagrams by examining the relationship between visual attention and learning outcomes. In Experiment 1 (N = 55) students learned about the circulatory heart system from a multimedia lesson either with or without signals highlighting text–diagram correspondences. Results showed that students learning with signals attended to signaled (but not to non-signaled) information more frequently and earlier during learning; these changes in visual attention could explain better performance in answering text–diagram-integration questions. Experiment 2 (N = 78) replicated these findings with respect to early attention on signaled diagram elements and learning outcomes; in addition, a third condition was investigated, where signals highlighted diagram elements that did not match the text. Results showed that mismatched signals guided attention only initially, whereas later on students attended more to information that corresponded to the text. Mismatched signals had no effect on learning outcomes. Taken together, the results suggest that signals aid learning by highlighting specific text–diagram correspondences and not by amplifying diagram processing more generally.     

The reverse modality effect: Examining student learning from interactive computer‐based instruction

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of modality on learning from multimedia instruction. This study utilized a factorial between‐subject design to examine the effects of modality on student learning outcomes, study patterns and mental effort. An interactive computer‐presented diagram was developed to teach the places of articulation in human speech. A total of 151 undergraduate students at a large southwestern university in USA participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two modality conditions (ie, written text and spoken text). Data were obtained through surveys, student logs and knowledge tests. Findings revealed a reverse modality effect, wherein participants who studied with written text outperformed those who studied with spoken text.     

Teacher expertise and the development of a problem representation

This study examined ways in which expert and novice teachers mentally represent classroom problems in matters of instruction, assessment, and curriculum planning. A triad judgement task was administered to expert teachers (n=20) and novice teachers (n=98) to determine whether deep, structural features (i.e. the theoretical underpinnings associated with the problem) and/or surface features (narrative characteristics of the problem including grade level and subject) were used to interpret and represent a problem situation presented in a classroom context. Findings were consistent with results from previous studies examining problem representation among experts and novices in other domains. That is, the experts in this study primarily relied on the deep features to form a mental representation of a problem situation whereas the novices tended to rely on surface structures to do so. However, findings also revealed that novice teachers relied on the deep, structural features of the problem under certain conditions.     

A flow-map method of representing cognitive structure based on respondents' narrative using science content

Increasing interest in science education research has focused on ways of representing cognitive structure in graphical and quantitative terms. A method is presented for displaying the sequential and multirelational ideation of scientific narrative elicited from respondents. The flow map provides a figural representation of the flow of information, the points in the flow where multirelational and recurrent linkages are made, and the time required to retrieve and express the information at major intervals in the sequence and in total. In keeping with constructivist models of information analysis, the elicitation of responses requires minimal intervention by the interviewer, and flow-map representation requires low inference for its construction, providing a convenient diagram of the sequential and multirelational thought patterns expressed by the respondent. The method is illustrated by analyzing interviews from students varying in academic achievement under two interview conditions that varied in emphasis on recall of multiple relationships. The illustrative data show that students of increasing academic ability produce flow maps of more complex patterns with more cross-relational linkages. These kinds of linkages, on the whole, increase with increased emphasis in the interview on recall of relationships.     

External and internal representations in the acquisition and use of knowledge: visualization effects on mental model construction

This article investigates whether different formats of visualizing information result in different mental models constructed in learning from pictures, whether the different mental models lead to different patterns of performance in subsequently presented tasks, and how these visualization effects can be modified by further external representations during task performance. A total of 80 university students learned from an illustrated text different day times and different dates exist simultaneously on the earth. One half of the participants received the text combined with pictures visualizing the earth as a kind of carpet (carpet pictures), whereas the other half received the text combined with pictures visualizing the earth surface as a circle (circle pictures). After learning, the participants received a test including different kinds of tasks. In both visualization groups, one half of the participants solved the tasks with an additional external representation, whereas the other half solved the tasks without an external representation. The findings indicate that the form of visualization affects the structure of mental models. Different structures of mental models result in different patterns of performance, when individuals solve tasks based only on their mental representations acquired during their previous learning. However, these effects decrease, when further external representations are made available to the learners. The findings are discussed within a broader framework of learning with multiple external representations.     

Gender differences when choosing school subjects: Parental push and career pull. Some tentative hypotheses

The literature has made us all aware of large gender differences in students' atttudes to science, in enrolment statistics in upper high school and tertiary level science courses, and in different spheres of employment. What have not been looked at in detail are the factors which are influential when students begin to make choices in early high school, choices which may well set them on a particular pathway from which it is difficult to turn. This preliminary study identifies factors which students in a Year 9 class believed were influential on the limited subject choices they had been able to make in Years 8 and 9, and the factors they believed would be most influential on choices to be made later in the school. In addition the students' views of science, of the separate sciences, and of their anticipated career patterns were sought. Several interesting findings were made which, if validated in further work, could lead to strategies which would support other approaches designed to reduce gender imbalances related to science. Specializations: non-scientific conceptions and conceptual change, problem solving, science teacher education. Specializations: Gender issues.