The fundamental assumption of the book is that research on learning in science necessarily involves making knowledge claims based on building and. In this volume, I offer an account of the modeling processes involved in research on student understanding and learning in science.
Acknowledgements
This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by making the case that in the field of science education it is all too common for research reports to discuss the complex phenomena of student thinking and learning as if these processes were simple and well understood. Parts II, III and IV of the book will explore these notions and consider how well we understand these phenomena and how we go about modeling them in the way we approach and report research. .
Part I
The introductory part consists of a single chapter on the centrality of models for knowledge requirements in science education. It is not too much of a 'spoiler' to note here that we do not fully understand students' thinking and learning, and that forming representations and models of these processes is far from straightforward.
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Centrality of Models for Knowledge Claims in Science Education
This will be discussed in more detail later in the book, but at this point it is important to note that because of the wide influence of the constructivist perspective, much research in science education has made claims about what students know and understand or how their knowledge and understanding has changed—that is, claims about learning. The central argument of this book is that these knowledge claims are inevitably based on models, so the claims in research reports can only be fully appreciated by readers who recognize the models for what they are and understand something about modeling processes. used to derive them.
Some Examples of Knowledge Claims Made in Studies
The motivation for this book stems from a concern that this is not always explicit in research reports, nor is it fully appreciated by those who use them. This lack of evaluation of the status or research findings and the processes that produce them undermines the potential of research to inform more effective classroom work.
Knowledge Claims in Research
The publication of research reports in such journals is used as a criterion that the research is considered thorough and that the knowledge claims made are well supported. The processes by which the claims in individual papers are variously challenged, elaborated, ignored, forgotten, built upon, or considered groundbreaking are certainly important, but are somewhat open to debate in different accounts of the scientific enterprise.
Locating This Work Within a Research Programme
It is possible to teach science more effectively if the learner's existing ideas are taken into account. The reader should therefore note that the arrow from 'teaching' to 'learning' is marked in terms of the intentions that inform teaching.
Assumptions Informing the Research Process May Not Be Explicit
But if we take a review of the past decades of research in science education, it is clear that: What is being argued here is that these aspects of research reporting in our research area are often limited and inadequate.
Knowledge Claims Need to Be Understood as Being About Models
The right side (rhs) of the figure provides an overview of the processes by which researchers develop representations of student knowledge to be reported in the literature. This volume then explores the processes by which knowledge claims about students' knowledge and developing understanding are produced: processes that at their core involve researchers gathering and analyzing evidence to construct (1) models of knowledge and thinking of students and (2) changes in that knowledge related to learning and conceptual development.
Part II
Modelling Mental Processes in the Science Learner
Chapter 2
Introduction to Part II: The Mental Register
Clearly, there must be another interpretation of what is meant by making "student" thinking visible and therefore accessible. We can refer to this as the mental register, where key terms will include thinking, ideas, understanding, knowledge and beliefs.
The Problem of Natural Language in Technical Studies
Whether this is because of the difficulty of defining these concepts or because there are some practical advantages for teachers to work in this way, it certainly seems inappropriate that educational researchers studying teaching and learning should show the same lack of precision. when using these terms. Most likely, teachers talk about these terms in such an imprecise way simply because that is the way language is generally used.
Folk Psychology as a Lifeworld Structure
This situation somewhat parallels that reported by Solomon, who studied high school students who talked about energy in the classroom. In a normal or "natural" relationship, we all tend to categorize our experiences rather loosely—k.
Mental Life
Chapter 3
Modelling Mental Activity
In the context of the area of research discussed in this book, this raises the question of what is meant, for example, by an individual's knowledge or what is meant by reporting that someone understands something. At least, that was the meaning constructed of the poem by this reader – but it is in the nature of such works of art that they can have multiple readings.
The Mind
How can our minds interact with matter to create actions in the physical world? However, it is logically entirely possible that our thoughts are better understood as by-products of the physical processes taking place in the brain.
Consciousness as an Emergent Property of Processing
So, for example, to recall something (a subjective experience) can be understood in terms of the system level as information that was before. This allows the development of simple system-level models of the learner, as discussed later in the book.
Consequences for Science Education
Principles Informing the Account in This Book
The paradox of science education is that it aims to impart new schemas that will replace students' existing ideas that differ from the scientific theories being taught. Researchers studying students' thinking and learning in science have used a wide variety of terms to describe what they are investigating (Abimbola, 1988), but when Black and Lucas edited a volume on the subject in 1993, they chose to suggest that children's informal ideas. in science as a relatively neutral term' (Black & Lucas, 1993a, p. xii).
The Idea of Ideas
Chapter 4
The Learner’s Ideas
An obvious answer is that ideas are derived from the sensation of the world – but it is clear that not all ideas can be derived directly from sensory experience. Ideas such as the notion of the electron, the second law of thermodynamics, and the alternative concept that exercise gives you energy are not based on direct observations in any straightforward and simple way.
Sensation and Perceiving the World
Moreover, it is not near the periphery of the light-sensitive area, but relatively central. In the part of the cortex that processes visual signals, there is a patch of cortex that corresponds to each person's eye.
Paying Attention: Distinguishing Subliminal and Preconscious Processing
Everything that is apparently new to us occurs in the context of an old and well-established memory” (Fuster, 1995, p. 4). The discussion above deals with an object or event in the environment that is felt and perceived and provides a resource for the learner's conscious ideas.
Recalling Experiences
Imagining Possibilities
In rare individuals, synesthetes, there are strong connections between sensory impressions that go far beyond the experience of most people (eg certain numbers are associated with certain colors or sounds that evoke tastes) and which appear to be suboptimal in forming mental models of the world , because association to non-synethetes may seem arbitrary with respect to the objects that stimulate the perceptions. Our ability to imagine things that we have not experienced and could not even experience (because they do not reflect actual states of the external world and may even be physically impossible, i.e. they may not even reflect possible states of the external world) suggests that the same or at least a comparable processing apparatus can use the resources from which we construct our experience here and now and construct alternative possibilities.
Expressing Ideas
The representation formed in the external world is therefore at least two steps away from the experienced idea. 4.10 , where the representation is in the external world and has a physical form such as sound, inscriptions, bodily movement, etc., quite different from the nature of the thought itself.
Accessing Another’s Ideas
Whether Lev's idea of Jean's idea could be considered similar enough to Jean's idea to be considered in practice, the 'same' idea, a shared idea, is a challenging question - how could we ever be sure. In relation to the notion that there are three worlds (Popper, 1979), Jean's idea and Lev's idea are 'World 2' objects.
Research to Investigate Learners’ Ideas in Science
Chapter 5
The Learner’s Memory
In particular, episodic memory is related to specific events, while semantic memory refers to memory for general information 'not related to a specific event' (Walker & Stickgold, 2004, p. 122), that is, abstracted from the specific context. of learning. Remembering one's graduation ceremony would be based on episodic memory, while making sense of the memory by remembering that graduation is a congregation for conferring degrees would be based on semantic memory.
Memory as a Source of Our Ideas
The Physical, Functional and Mental Aspects of Memory
What does seem clear, and important to researchers making assumptions about the nature of the knowledge “stored” in the learner's memory, is that commonplace folk beliefs about memory can seriously misrepresent it. Furthermore, research on the brain, as discussed below, casts doubt on the idea that there is even a discrete memory store "somewhere" in the brain.
The Nature of the Learner’s Memory Store
Other components of the cognitive system are considered to be able to store information in the shorter term, for example, to support "high-level" processing (when we are consciously thinking about something or working on a problem). The report of this case here is also subject to all the considerations I raised earlier in the book.
Working Memory
Chapter 6
The Learner’s Understanding
A consideration of what might be meant by this term provides a useful illustration of the argument made in Chapter 2.
The Meanings of Understanding
Our definition of a person's understanding of democracy is that it is the set of statements, strings, images, episodes, and intellectual and motor skills that the person associates with the label “democracy.” White and Gunstone's definition takes into account the fact that understanding is a complex and dynamic entity.
Two Perspectives on Understanding
White and Gunstone saw understanding as dependent on resources from previous learning: 'to understand a concept you need to have some information about it in your memory' (p. 3). Research on learners' understanding of aspects of science will necessarily be complicated by the complexity of that research focus.
Normative and Idiographic Approaches to Exploring Understanding
Such research requires qualitative, some would suggest ethnographic approaches, due to the nature of the subject matter. Conversely, in the idiographic tradition, the research should be more open, with the aim of investigating how the student understands a topic or concept, without being too channeled by the researcher's own understanding of the target concept.
Testing Student Understanding: Challenges of the Normative- Positivistic Approach
In normative-positivist research, the starting point is the target understanding of the subject, that is, the understanding that the student is asked to acquire and against which the students are in reality tested. It can be argued that if the student does not recognize the relevance of certain ideas to the subject, then this shows a deficient understanding, since in the target understanding there is a clear connection, so that its relevance is part of the understanding.
The Messy Nature of Student Understanding
The items are mostly written to represent aspects of the target knowledge (understanding ionic bonding in electrostatic terms) or the alternative framework for understanding ionic bonding in molecular terms. On a simplistic notion of student understanding, it could be expected that individual students would either have learned the target concept of ionic bonding, and therefore judge the statements accordingly, or if they understood ionic bonding in terms of the alternative framework, they would instead judge statements according to that way of understanding.
Different Ways of Understanding
There is an important distinction to be made here, between (a) understanding one's commitment to being the best way to understand some aspect of the world, and (b) understanding other understandings. This would appear to be somewhat different from the situation of a student who has two distinct ways of understanding ionic bonding, or the relationship between force and motion, and is not strongly committed to either as the best way to understand that aspect of the world.
Describing Student Understanding: Challenges of the Idiographic Approach
However, if done carefully and subject to the necessary constraints, it can be argued that the reduction and subsequent simple evaluation/comparison of student understanding with statements of target or "typical" understanding may be justified, as the reduction represents key elements of the original account. which can be used as valid summaries (and which can be argued to be valid as such because they arise from in-depth research and thus take into account and acknowledge the complexity of the learner's understanding). This probably depends on a range of factors, including the perceived purposes of the research.
Comprehending Language
Chapter 7
The Learner’s Thinking
It was notable that some scientists “reworked” some of the items presented in the surveys, thinking and looking for alternative explanations. Yet the term is used quite differently in the body of the article (again with my added emphasis.
Establishing a Meaning for ‘Thinking’
Conscious thought is considered to be a correlate of processing in some executive module of the system (see Chap. 3), usually identified with working memory (see Chap. I would suggest that the crossword activity provides a useful insight into the limits of conscious awareness during thinking.
The Fallacy of ‘Machine Code’
This offers the potential for a much more flexible and responsive processing device than is possible with an electronic computer – with the stability of the series of connections in the processor being quite important to its normal operation. Furthermore, output can influence input through a chain of connections: that is, there is potential for feedback in the system.
Key Terms from the Mental Register
In this part of the book, I have presented a way of thinking about key notions from the mental register, informed by well-accepted ideas from the cognitive sciences, that can act as a basis for reformulating these notions as constructs. able to discuss research. So assuming that the mind is an emergent property of the central nervous system—indeed primarily of the cortical areas of the brain—and for many purposes is best understood in functional terms as an information-processing system (but leading to conscious experience ), I have suggested how we might better understand notions such as thinking, understanding, and remembering.
Part III
Modelling the Science Learner’s Knowledge
Chapter 8
Introduction to Part III: Knowledge in a Cognitive System Approach
Being aware of yourself as a conscious actor in the world also enables the development of metacognition, which, as suggested in the previous chapter, provides the possibility of monitoring, reflecting and evaluating our own cognition. In the previous work, we explored a number of key themes, taking terms from the mental register of the lifeworld and considering how they might be understood in terms of the learner-as-a-cognitive-system model.
Seeking to Understand ‘Knowledge’ Within the Cognitive System Approach
An individual's knowledge can be understood in terms of the cognitive systems approach, as with terms such as understanding and memory (as in Figure 8.3), but it is more difficult to see how knowledge – if understood in these terms – can also be understood in terms of knowledge. It is said to exist in public spaces between individuals. Public knowledge is therefore better understood as knowledge that is generally known and generally accessible because it is represented in the distributed system of the network of people.
Chapter 9
The Nature of the Learner’s Knowledge
In the broadest sense of the term 'knowledge', meaning itself is a kind of knowledge, but in the narrower sense, knowledge is contrasted with meaning. However, (iii) offers the learner a rather essential piece of information – the result of the application of this knowledge.
The Possibility of Distributed Knowledge
In the introduction to the current part (Chap. 8) the general context of human cognition is outlined in terms of sensing, modeling and acting on the environment, then observing the new state of the environment, providing feedback for modifying the internal model of, and guiding intelligent action in, the world (see Fig. 8.1. Two classmates, Jean and Jerome gathered to review for a test, look at a diagram provided by the teacher entitled 'the structure of NaCl '.
