The Challenge of Developing Systems Thinkers: How Misconceptions About Complex Causality Contribute to Fundamental Problems in Scientific Learning

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9725502 Grotzer Learning to understand and analyze the systems concepts present in many different scientific phenomena entails interpreting a variety of types of complex causal relationships. Yet students tend to hold preconceptions and misconceptions about causality that hinder learning and systematically generate misconceptions in science content. There are different levels of increasingly sophisticated forms of complex causality. At each level, learners face new cognitive challenges where mismatches between students' causal models and scientific causal models arise and imperil scientific understandings. Despite the fundamental importance of complex causal models, few materials exist to help teachers support student learning about complex causal forms. A taxonomy of increasingly complex causal models that represent different sets of science understandings will be generated. Students' understandings of the different models and the inherent protoconcepts will be probed using computer and paper-based assessments, interviews, and observations. Mismatches between students' and scientific models will be investigated to identify and examine points of difficulty. Researchers and teachers will then work together to develop and assess intervention materials designed to help students beyond these points of difficulty. The resulting program, tentatively titled "The Understandings of Consequence Program," will be constructivist in nature. It will invite explicit student reflection upon causal models as situated in science content and how they map onto different scientific phenomenon. Methods will be developed for modeling and talking about specific concepts of difficulty. The program will be designed to be infused into existing science programs as well as provide direction for the development of future programs. In the third and final year of the project, the program will be tested with a set of teachers who were not involved in the research and development process. This will suggest what addition al supports may be needed for the broader dissemination of the program as well as provide a means of testing its effectiveness outside the development context. The effectiveness of the program will be evaluated through use of qualitative, conceptual methods as well as standardized assessments. The analysis will combine quantitative and qualitative methods. The program will then be offered for broad dissemination. By focusing on a set of misunderstandings and preconceptions that systematically generate other misunderstandings, the resulting materials and methods should fundamentally impact science learning. It will contribute of halting a pattern of systematically generated misconceptions-enabling conceptual changes that equip learners to grasp complex causal concepts and systematically contribute to deep understanding in science learning instead. ***