In an undergraduate analysis course taught by one of the authors, three prompts are regularly given: (i) What do we know? (ii) What do we need to show? (iii) Let’s draw a picture. We focus on the third prompt and its role in helping students develop their confidence in learning how to construct proofs. Specific examples of visual models and their impact on student work are presented. 相似文献
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. 相似文献
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
Multiple external representations (MERs) are central to the practice and learning of science, mathematics and engineering, as the phenomena and entities investigated and controlled in these domains are often not available for perception and action. MERs therefore play a twofold constitutive role in reasoning in these domains. Firstly, MERs stand in for the phenomena and entities that are imagined, and thus make possible scientific investigations. Secondly, related to the above, sensorimotor and imagination-based interactions with the MERs make possible focused cognitive operations involving these phenomena and entities, such as mental rotation and analogical transformations. These two constitutive roles suggest that acquiring expertise in science, mathematics and engineering requires developing the ability to transform and integrate the MERs in that field, in tandem with running operations in imagination on the phenomena and entities the MERs stand for. This core ability to integrate external and internal representations and operations on them – termed representational competence (RC) – is therefore critical to learning in science, mathematics and engineering. However, no general account of this core process is currently available. We argue that, given the above two constitutive roles played by MERs, a theoretical account of representational competence requires an explicit model of how the cognitive system interacts with external representations, and how imagination abilities develop through this process. At the applied level, this account is required to develop design guidelines for new media interventions for learning science and mathematics, particularly emerging ones that are based on embodied interactions. As a first step to developing such a theoretical account, we review the literature on learning with MERs, as well as acquiring RC, in chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics and engineering, from two perspectives. First, we focus on the important theoretical accounts and related empirical studies, and examine what is common about them. Second, we summarise the major trends in each discipline, and then bring together these trends. The results show that most models and empirical studies of RC are framed within the classical information processing approach, and do not take a constitutive view of external representations. To develop an account compatible with the constitutive view of external representations, we outline an interaction-based theoretical account of RC, extending recent advances in distributed and embodied cognition. 相似文献
This paper examines part of a set of students who were followed during their first-term, first-year studies in formal definition-based
real analysis at a British university. It explores the approaches to problems about convergence of sequences and series made
by students who have a tendency to include visual imagery in their reasoning. We explore links between the students' mathematical
behavior in solving these problems and their perception of their roles as learners. We develop a theory in which the tendency
to visualize, coupled with the students' view of their role, can be used to account for their mathematical behavior.
This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. 相似文献
Background: Textbooks are integral tools for teachers’ lessons. Several researchers observed that school teachers rely heavily on textbooks as informational sources when planning lessons. Moreover, textbooks are an important resource for developing students’ knowledge as they contain various representations that influence students’ learning. However, several studies report that students have difficulties understanding models in general, and chemical bonding models in particular, and that students’ difficulties understanding chemical bonding are partly due to the way it is taught by teachers and presented in textbooks.
Purpose: This article aims to delineate the influence of textbooks on teachers’ selection and use of representations when teaching chemical bonding models and to show how this might cause students’ difficulties understanding.
Sample: Ten chemistry teachers from seven upper secondary schools located in Central Sweden volunteered to participate in this study.
Design and methods: Data from multiple sources were collected and analysed, including interviews with the 10 upper secondary school teachers, the teachers’ lesson plans, and the contents of the textbooks used by the teachers.
Results: The results revealed strong coherence between how chemical bonding models are presented in textbooks and by teachers, and thus depict that textbooks influence teachers’ selection and use of representations for their lessons. As discussed in the literature review, several of the selected representations were associated with alternative conceptions of, and difficulties understanding, chemical bonding among students.
Conclusions: The study highlights the need for filling the gap between research and teaching practices, focusing particularly on how representations of chemical bonding can lead to students’ difficulties understanding. The gap may be filled by developing teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge regarding chemical bonding and scientific models in general. 相似文献
This article argues the need to examine communication in joint play situations rather than individual assessments in solitary play situations when children's development is focused. Informed by Bakhtin's dialogical and Moscovici's interactionist perspectives, observations were made of the interaction between two girls, aged 3½ and 4, playing at holding a funeral ceremony, in the setting of a Swedish pre‐school. The analysis shows that new knowledge occurred through negotiations of appropriate actions in play. The children's interactions resulted in shared meaning‐making of the funeral as a ritual of revival. 相似文献