Purpose: In this study, we investigated how students’ mental models about one-dimensional expansion can be extended for purposes of running mental simulations about expansion along two dimensions.
Sample: To that end a pretest-posttest quasi-experiment has been conducted, with 100 students in the control group and 95 students in the experimental group.
Design and methods: Whereas control group students received traditional instruction with a focus on formal representations, in the experimental group the students were led to draw an analogy between heating of a straight rod and a circular rod of same length, whereby the internal structure of the rods was represented by springs.
Results: Eventually, it has been found that students from the experimental group were significantly more successful at predicting the effects of thermal expansion, especially within contexts of objects with holes.
Conclusion: Analogies and extreme case reasoning can be effectively used for helping the students to correctly transfer their mental models about one-dimensional expansion to situations that require reasoning about expansion along two dimensions. 相似文献