EAPSI: Investigating Cultural and Instructor Influences on Student Argumentation and Conceptual Understanding in Chemistry Classrooms

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This award supports aimed at understanding how cultural norms and instructor implementation of course materials influence student argumentation and conceptual understanding of chemistry. It is important to analyze the nature of the communication used by both the students and the instructor. The team will investigate student ability to generate scientific arguments and the conceptual level (macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and symbolic) at which they discuss chemical concepts. The role of the instructor in encouraging student conversations and helping students make connections between the different conceptual levels will also be explored. Further analysis of the arguments will be used to describe classrooms norms. Analysis of classroom interactions will provide insight regarding the nature of classroom conversations, the influence of cultural norms, the nature and quality of student generated arguments, and students? conceptual understanding of chemistry. This research will be conducted at National Taiwan Normal University in collaboration with Dr. Hsin-Kai Wu, an internationally recognized expert on analyzing interactions between teachers, students, and technology in the classroom.Transcripts of student dialogue in the classroom will be analyzed using Toulmin's Model of Argumentation to examine students' ability to generate scientific arguments. The representational levels for the arguments will then be identified using Johnstone's triangle. In addition, the Inquiry Oriented Discursive Moves Framework will be used to investigate the role of the instructor in encouraging student discourse and translation between different representational levels. Analysis of the course materials will help to examine the relationships between the nature of the materials and student reasoning, particularly with respect to the use of representations. Together this will allow the determination of the intertextuality and the links among the different aspects of a classroom learning environment. This NSF EAPSI award supports the research of a U.S. graduate student and is funded in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.