Alternative frameworks,conceptual conflict and accommodation: Toward a principled teaching strategy

Students' alternative frameworks (frequently regarded as misconceptions) play a crucial role in science concept learning. Accumulated research findings indicate that alternative frameworks are resistant to extinction despite formal instruction.This paper presents an instructional strategy based on the thesis that science concept learning involves cognitive accommodation of an initially held alternative framework. The strategy consists of three phases: (1) exposing alternative frameworks, (2) creating conceptual conflict, (3) encouraging cognitive accommodation. The first phase is facilitated through an exposing event, while the second and third focus on a discrepant event.The authors have used previous research findings about student alternative frame-works for the structure of a gas to create exposing and discrepant events for an introduction to the particle model of gases. The paper presents a case study of two lessons in a sequence on the particle model, accompanied by an analysis of the phases of the instructional strategy employed for cognitive accommodation.Based on a paper presented at the AERA convention, Los Angeles, California, April, 1981.This paper was prepared while the first author was a visiting professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.     

Student performance in off-campus programs

The quality of degree programs offered off-campus, particularly on military bases, has become an issue affecting many institutions of higher education. This study asked the question: Do students in off-campus programs perform as well as students in on-campus programs? As a basis for comparison, only courses taught on- and off-campus by the same instructor were chosen. Six courses, taught 37 times, by ten instructors, met these criteria. The subjects included the 649 undergraduate students from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale who received letter grades in these courses between 1975 and 1977. As a measure of performance, the grades of on- and off-campus students were compared by means of at-test. The mean grade of off-campus students (3.34) was not significantly different (at the .01 level) from that of on-campus students (3.29). As a control, faculty were interviewed to determine the equivalence in content and rigor of courses they taught in both settings. Faculty generally responded that their on- and off-campus courses were equivalent in content and rigor, supporting the use of grades as a measure of student performance. These results indicate that not only do faculty maintain their standards while teaching off-campus, but that the academic performance of off-campus students equals that of on-campus students.     

The use of formative evaluation procedures for improvement of a socially-oriented course in chemistry

In an article which appeared in the The Science Teacher (Novick & Sutman, 1973), the author described a new high school course which stressed the social implications of chemistry. The course was designed particularly for non-science majors to whom the collage-oriented courses of the last decade have not spoken effectively. It sought to help these students understand the relationship of chemistry to some of their society's social concerns and, in general, to promote their interest in this field.The purpose of the present paper is to describe the interactions with teachers which yielded information for the revision of the course as well as for the production of additional materials for both teachers and students. These interactions may be termed responsive in that they were oriented more directly to program activities than to program intents (Stake, 1972).     

Assessing Students' Understanding of Macroevolution: Concerns regarding the validity of the MUM

In a recent article, Nadelson and Southerland (2010. Development and preliminary evaluation of the Measure of Understanding of Macroevolution: Introducing the MUM. The Journal of Experimental Education, 78, 151–190) reported on their development of a multiple-choice concept inventory intended to assess college students' understanding of macroevolutionary concepts, the Measure of Understanding Macroevolution (MUM). Given that the only existing evolution inventories assess understanding of natural selection, a microevolutionary concept, a valid assessment of students' understanding of macroevolution would be a welcome and necessary addition to the field of science education. Although the conceptual framework underlying Nadelson and Southerland's test is promising, we believe the test has serious shortcomings with respect to validity evidence for the construct being tested. We argue and provide evidence that these problems are serious enough that the MUM should not be used in its current form to measure students' understanding of macroevolution.     

Snakes and Eels and Dogs! Oh, My! Evaluating High School Students’ Tree-Thinking Skills: An Entry Point to Understanding Evolution

The biological community is currently undertaking one its greatest scientific endeavours, that of constructing the Tree of Life, a phylogeny intended to be an evidenced-based, predictive road map of evolutionary relationships among Earth’s biota. Unfortunately, we know very little about how such diagrams are understood, interpreted, or used as inferential tools by students—collectively referred to as tree thinking. The present study provides the first in-depth look at US high school students’ competence at tree thinking and reports how they engage cognitively with tree representations as a precursor to developing curricula that will provide an entry point into macroevolution. Sixty tenth graders completed a 12-question instrument that assessed five basic tree-thinking skills. We present data that show patterns of misunderstandings are largely congruent between tenth graders and undergraduates and identify competences that are pivotal to address during instruction. Two general principles that emerge from this study are: (a) Students need to be taught that cladograms are an authoritative source of evidence that should be weighted more than other superficial or ecological similarities; (b) students need to understand the vital importance and critical difference between most recent common ancestry and common ancestry. Further, we show how the objectives of this study are closely aligned with US and International Standards and argue that scientifically-literate citizens need at least a basic understanding of the science behind the Tree of Life to understand and engage in twenty-first century societal issues such as human health, agriculture, and biotechnology.     

Interpreting evolutionary diagrams: When topology and process conflict

The authors argue that some diagrams in biology textbooks and the popular press presented as depicting evolutionary relationships suggest an inappropriate (anagenic) conception of evolutionary history. The goal of this research was to provide baseline data that begin to document how college students conceptualize the evolutionary relationships depicted in such noncladogenic diagrams and how they think about the underlying evolutionary processes. Study 1 investigated how students (n = 50) interpreted the evolutionary relationships depicted in four such evolutionary diagrams. In Study 2, new students (n = 62) were asked to interpret what the students in Study 1 meant when they used the terms evolved into/from and ancestor/descendant of. The results show the interpretations fell broadly into two categories: (a) evolution as an anagenic rather than cladogenic process, and (b) evolution as a teleological (purpose‐driven) process. These results imply that noncladogenic diagrams are inappropriate for use in evolution education because they lead to the misinterpretation of many evolutionary processes. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:861–882, 2010     

A HEBREW TEACHER'S MEMOIR

This article is a summary of a dissertation for the Master Education degree awarded by Wit‐watersand University, South Africa. The term “Matriculate”, which is not in common usage, refers to the young man or woman who has completed the officially recognised matriculation examination of its academic equivalent. ‘Day School’ refers to the Jewish school which conforms to the education authorities' requirements and, in addition to providing the same curriculum of studies as that of the Government Schools, includes instruction to matriculation level in Jewish studies and the Hebrew language.