Transcript Teaching Middle School Students to Reason with Visual Representations in Science

Teaching Middle School
Students to Reason with
Visual Representations in
Science
Jennifer G. Cromley, Nora Newcombe, Theodore W. Wills,
Melanie Wills, Melissa Karakus, & Michael Batchelor
Departments of Psychological Studies in Education,
Curriculum, Instruction, and Technology in Education, and
Department of Psychology
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Context of the Project
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21st Century Center on Cognition and Science
Instruction
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21PSTEM, Conshohocken, PA
Temple University
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh
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Contrasting cases
Visual representations
Prior knowledge/misconceptions
Spaced testing
5-year development & RCT project, testing
effects of modifications of existing curricula
using principles from cognitive science
Visual Representations in Science
Textbooks
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Line diagrams
Photographs
Photomicrographs
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Flow charts
Tables
Graphs
Conventions in Theories of
Diagrammatic Reasoning
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Larkin & Simon, 1987
◦ Search in representations…requires knowledge of
conventions
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Narayanan & Hegarty, 1989
◦ Need to recognize objects . . . in order to make
representational and referential connections
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Mayer, 2005
◦ Forming verbal and pictorial mental models . . .
Requires knowledge of conventions
Research on Students’ Understanding
of Visual Representations
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Mostly conducted in Europe and with
undergraduate non-Science majors reading
researcher-developed texts
Difficulties with
◦ conventions of diagrams (arrows, color keys,
captions, labels, etc.; Heiser & Tversky, 2006).
 Issues with meaning and also failure to inspect these
features
◦ “seductive details”—paying attention to the relevant
parts of the diagram (Sanchez & Wiley, 2006)
◦ failure to make inferences (Canham & Hegarty,
2010)
Research on Students and Visual
Representations
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Affected by individual differences
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A few intervention studies, again mostly with
undergraduate students
Note that there is a separate body of
research on animations
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◦ Lack of background knowledge (Scheiter et al.,
2009)
◦ Spatial ability (Bartholome & Bromme, 2009)
◦ Visuospatial working memory (Seufert et al., 2009)
◦ These might interact with domains (e.g., 3D
diagrams in Earth Science vs. 2D other domains)
◦ Animations add additional challenges
Example (MS “Cells, Heredity”)
• Arrows, color,
abbreviations, labels,
enlargement, relative
scale/magnification,
symbols
• Requires prior
knowledge
• Requires inference
Why Teach Conventions?
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Middle school science textbooks frequently
use visual representations (approx. 1 per
page)
Standardized science tests at the state,
national, and international level frequently
use visual representations, and student
performance is poor on these items
Textbooks do not embed instruction in how to
understand these representations
Teachers assume that students already know
how to use these representations, so they do
not teach them
Our approach
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Create modifications
◦ Instruction in conventions of diagrams that
teachers give verbally
 Begin with one convention at a time, gradually increase
the number of conventions per image
 Spaced testing on these conventions
◦ Student practice
 Identifying conventions (e.g., naming labels, captions)
 Creating their own captions, etc.
 Matching, e.g., labels to parts of diagrams
◦ In a very few cases, create “fly-ins”—versions of
modifications where layers of the diagram are
shown one at a time
Example (MS “Intro to Matter”)
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1) Would the beam still follow the same path when the plates are charged?
2) What happens to the beam when the plates are charged?
Teacher scaffolds discussion
The teacher presents the modified image, and gives students
a minute to read (or reads to them) the questions and asks if
there is enough information in the diagram to answer the
questions. (The students should have difficulty answering
them because the information in the labels is incomplete.)
 1) Would the beam still follow the same path when the plates
are charged? Explain. (or Would the glowing spot be in the
same place when the plates were charged? Explain.) No. It
would go through a different path which is pulled towards the
positively charged plate. (No. It would be lower and closer to
the positively charged plate.)
 2) What happens to the beam when the plates are charged?
The beam would be pulled towards the positively charged
plates.
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Before
After
After (Teacher explanation)
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In addition to their roles in indicating magnification and indicating
length, arrows can also be used to indicate that substances are
changing (from one state to another, in this case).
Display the image above, which is a modified version of Figure 1 on
Page 40
The Teacher should indicate that the arrows show that ice cubes
and water are interchangeable through the processes of melting
and freezing, and clouds and water are also interchangeable
through the processes of condensation and evaporation.
The directions of the arrows show the states before and after the
change (for example, changing from water to ice is the process of
freezing, and changing from cloud to water is the process of
condensation, etc).
Remind students that, from what they learned in Chapter 1, what is
written in the arrows are naming labels which identify the
processes.
Example
(MS
“Inside .
. Earth”)
Challenges of Doing the Research
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Adding this instruction means some other
aspects of the curriculum have to be cut back
Diversity of
◦ Types of representations
◦ Conventions
◦ Prior knowledge required
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Diversity of student literacy and background
knowledge levels
Teacher implementation; initially invisibility of
the problem
Occasional need to replace images
Integrating Cog Sci Modifications
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Contrasting case work influences Visual
representations work which influences
Misconceptions/Prior knowledge work (and
vice versa)
Acknowledgments
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F. Joseph Merlino, PI and The 21st Century
Partnership for STEM Education staff
Christian Schunn, Christine Massey, Andrew
Porter, Co-PIs
IES award #R305C080009 to The 21st
Century Partnership for STEM Education
The opinions expressed are those of the
authors and do not represent the views of
the U.S. Department of Education
Contact: [email protected]