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Instr Sci (2017) 45:5372
DOI 10.1007/s11251-016-9392-y
Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver1 Rebecca Jordan2 Catherine Eberbach3
Suparna Sinha2
Received: 8 May 2015 / Accepted: 31 August 2016 / Published online: 16 September 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract In this paper, we share results from a classroom intervention that used a conceptual representation to support reasoning about ecosystems. Engaging students in modeling allows them to make their ideas visible while being malleable and available for discussion, which enables students to make meaning out of systems. Further, the Components-Mechanisms-Phenomena (CMP) conceptual representation was designed to enable students to construct coherent mental models. Following our intervention, students deepened their understanding of ecosystem dynamics when compared to students who engaged in traditional instruction without use of the CMP conceptual representation. We discuss our results in terms of data that helped guide the design of the intervention and we describe a theoretical perspective that can be used to guide future instruction.
Keywords Systems thinking Conceptual representations Simulations and modeling
Engagement with authentic scientic practices is critical to learning science and may be especially important for learning about systems (2013; Lehrer and Schauble, 2012). We present here the results from a classroom intervention that used modeling and a conceptual representation to support reasoning about systems. Engaging students in modeling provides opportunity for making ideas visible and available for constructive discussion, which can improve learning outcomes (e.g., Jordan et al. 2013b; Jordan et al. 2014). Clement (2000) has argued that model construction and revision is at the heart of scientic practice, which requires a top-down disciplinary perspective, bottom-up raw observations and data, and a
& Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver [email protected]
1 Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
2 Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
3 National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, USA
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Web End = Systems learning with a conceptual representation: a quasi-experimental study
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dialectic process that encourages meaning-making. Conceptual representations provide an organizing framework for thinking about systems and can aid in model construction.
Complex natural systems are an important part of the world in which we live and, as such, systems thinking cuts across domains (Yoon 2008) and is recognized as a cross-cutting concept in the Next Generation Science Standards (2013)....