Making the Invisible Visible: Children and Teachers Learning about Physical States and State Changes

让不可见变得可见：儿童和教师学习物理状态和状态变化

• 批准号: 0529648
• 负责人: Nancy Stein
• 金额: $ 116.67万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-10-01 至 2010-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0529648&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Making; Invisible; Visible; Children; Teachers

This project will study how children and their teachers come to understand the invisible processes and mechanisms that underlie states and state changes in the water cycle. These studies are designed to test the effectiveness of a concept formation and explanation-based approach to learning and instruction. They also test the effectiveness of visual graphics and corrective feedback in learning difficult physical concepts that have multiple processes occurring simultaneously. We know that explanation-based instruction increases understanding, learning, and retention of information. The structuring of text material in clear, explicit, causal, and explanatory ways is highly effective in achieving understanding and retention immediately and over the long term. The use of visual graphics in teaching about invisible physical processes, however, may be a critical variable for ensuring accurate understanding, above and beyond the coherence of a text. Receiving corrective feedback that compares the correct answer to an incorrect or incomplete answer may also be critical. The review of curricular materials used in elementary school science classes on this topic noted the clear absence of explicit concept definitions as well as explicit causal links that explained the relationships among many core concepts. Further, the explicit acknowledgement of ongoing parallel processes was never mentioned. In contrast, our curriculum for the current studies provides explicit definitions of all the concepts, explanations of all the processes, and a focus on the unfolding of parallel processes. The curriculum was designed using an ideal end-state model of what it would mean for a student to have a correct and complete understanding of the water cycle. This model is used as a basis for assessments as well as instruction. The model is also used to suggest when and how graphics may be incorporated most effectively into instruction, as visual explanations of important, but invisible processes. The study will include students and teachers in Chicago public schools. In the first two years of studies, 3rd and 4th grade teachers, 3rd and 4th grade students, and students from 7th and 12th grades will be pulled out for special instruction on these science units. Instruction will vary in terms of the amount and kind of feedback given to students to address misconceptions, whether students self-explain the materials out loud or not, and the presence or absence of static or animated visual graphics. In the third year, 3rd and 4th grade teachers who have first served as learners in our studies will then implement and teach the units in their own classrooms. The effectiveness of the new curriculum will be tested in two ways. In all three years, learning will be assessed via pre-post interviews and tests with students and teachers who receive different versions of the unit. We will also compare our students' performance to the performance of students who have not received our curriculum, but who have used other curricular materials like the FOSS system. Students will be compared on their knowledge of the water cycle and on their knowledge of general science concepts

该项目将研究儿童和他们的教师如何理解水循环中的状态和状态变化背后的无形过程和机制。这些研究旨在测试概念形成和基于概念的学习和教学方法的有效性。他们还测试了视觉图形和纠正反馈在学习同时发生多个过程的困难物理概念方面的有效性。 我们知道，基于启发式的教学可以提高理解、学习和信息的保留。以清晰、明确、因果和解释性的方式构建文本材料，对于立即和长期实现理解和记忆非常有效。然而，在关于无形的物理过程的教学中使用视觉图形，可能是确保准确理解的一个关键变量，这超出了文本的连贯性。接收将正确答案与不正确或不完整答案进行比较的纠正反馈也可能至关重要。 对小学科学课上使用的关于这一主题的课程材料的审查指出，显然缺乏明确的概念定义以及解释许多核心概念之间关系的明确因果关系。此外，从未提及明确承认正在进行的并行进程。相比之下，我们目前的研究课程提供了所有概念的明确定义，所有过程的解释，并侧重于并行过程的展开。 该课程的设计使用了一个理想的最终状态模型，这将意味着学生有一个正确和完整的理解水循环。该模型被用作评估和指导的基础。该模型还用于建议何时以及如何将图形最有效地纳入教学，作为重要但不可见过程的视觉解释。 这项研究将包括芝加哥公立学校的学生和教师。在学习的头两年，3年级和4年级的教师，3年级和4年级的学生，以及7年级和12年级的学生将被抽出对这些科学单元进行特殊指导。教学将在以下方面有所不同：给予学生的反馈的数量和种类，以解决误解，学生是否大声地自我解释材料，以及是否存在静态或动画视觉图形。在第三年，第三和第四年级的教师谁曾在我们的研究首先担任学习者，然后将在自己的教室实施和教学单位。 新课程的有效性将通过两种方式进行检验。在所有三年中，学习将通过与收到不同版本单元的学生和教师进行事前面试和测试进行评估。我们还将比较我们学生的表现与没有接受我们课程但使用了其他课程材料（如FOSS系统）的学生的表现。学生将比较他们对水循环的知识和对一般科学概念的知识