ROLE: Extending the Understandings of Consequence Project: Investigating Strategic Pedagogical Challenges

扩展对后果项目的理解：调查迁移和持久性科学家接受的解释通常要求学生以与他们对因果行为性质的期望相矛盾的方式构建知识。这种解释可能涉及：因果机制是推断或抽象的;因果模式，超越线性和单向循环，互惠和非顺序;因果关系之间的对应关系，在各个方面的概率;和因果代理人是分散的，涉及出现的方面。这些是学生通常不熟悉的思维方式和抽象方法。“对后果的理解项目”揭示了学生和科学家的解释往往有非常不同类型的因果结构的核心。该项目表明，影响学生对因果关系性质的假设是一种很有前途的方法，可以帮助学生重组知识，实现科学理解。然而，还有一些挥之不去的问题有待回答，例如在一个主题中学习因果形式到另一个主题的可转移性以及随后的重组的持续性。本项目是对“对后果的理解项目”的延伸，旨在系统地研究这些问题。我们将评估对因果形式的理解向同构和非同构因果形式的主题以及更广泛的科学学习的转移。将评估最低水平的以学生为中心和教师为导向的转移支持的影响。在同一学年的晚些时候和两年后，将审查学习的持续性。调查结果将导致修订的理解的后果课程单元。这项研究有可能影响所有学生学习科学的深度和持久性。

Extending The Understandings of Consequence Project: Investigating Transfer and Persistence Scientifically accepted explanations often require students to structure knowledge in ways that contradict their expectations about the nature of how causes and effects behave. Such explanations can involve: causal mechanisms that are inferred or abstract; causal patterns that extend beyond linear and unidirectional to cyclic, reciprocal, and non-sequential; correspondences between causes and effects that are in various respects probabilistic; and causal agents that are decentralized and involve aspects of emergence. These are ways of thinking and abstractions students typically are not familiar with. "The Understandings of Consequence Project" revealed that students and scientists' explanations tend to have very different types of causal structures at the core. The project demonstrated that impacting students' assumptions about the nature of causality is a promising approach for helping students restructure their knowledge and achieve scientific understandings. However, there are lingering questions to be answered, such as the transferability of learning about causal forms in one topic to another and the persistence of the subsequent restructuring. The current project extends "The Understandings of Consequence Project" to systematically investigate these questions. We will assess the transfer of understanding of causal forms to topics with isomorphic and non-isomorphic causal forms and to science learning more generally. The impact of minimal levels of student-focused and teacher-directed transfer support will be assessed. Persistence of learning will be examined later in the same school year and again two years later. Findings will result in revisions to the Understandings of Consequence curriculum units. This research has the potential to impact how deeply and lastingly all students learn science.