Collaborative Research: How Deep Structural Modeling Supports Learning with Big Ideas in Biology

该项目解决了围绕贯穿科学学科的“大思想”更有效地组织STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）教学的迫切需求。包括美国国家研究委员会（National Research Council）和美国大学理事会（College Board）在内的政策领导人大力推动了这一需求。他们指出，当学生在一致的知识框架内组织和链接信息时，学习更有效，而这正是大思想应该提供的。不幸的是，找到有效地教授伟大思想的方法——使它们成为有用的知识框架——是一项重大挑战。深层结构建模（DSM）是本项目中提出的创新，旨在应对高中生物学背景下的这一挑战。在DSM中，学生学习一个大的概念，作为包含该结构的一组示例的潜在或“深层”结构，但具有不同的外部细节。当学习者开始理解示例中的深层结构（即大思想）时，他们会使用科学建模的工具和程序来表达和发展它。根据以DSM为基础的学习理论，这一过程的结果应该是一个灵活、有意义、易于表达的大想法，从而为学习者理解遇到的新信息提供了一个理想的框架（即，用大想法学习）。在某种程度上，这种解释诞生于严格的研究测试和真实的课程材料中，它提供了关于如何围绕大思想组织教学和学习的重要知识，不仅适用于深层结构建模，也适用于其他教学方法。这个项目有两个研究和原型开发组件。这两项测试都是在高中生物的背景下进行的，在三个地区的9个教室里进行，支持多达610名学生。本研究的重点是DSM的三个设计特点：(1)用直观、机械的思想嵌入模型源材料；(2)支持学习者将这些想法抽象为一组资源共享的深层结构；(3)在模型内有效地表示这种深层结构。综合起来，这些特征支持学生理解抽象的、直观丰富的、高效的知识结构，他们随后将其用作解释、组织和链接学科内容的框架。一系列的五项研究相互建立，以发展关于设计特征是否以及如何带来这些预期效果的知识。该序列的早期研究是小规模的课堂实验，随机分配学生进行深层结构建模或平行的非建模控制。在学习期间和测试后的预期效果的措施有所区别。后来的研究使用定性方法仔细追踪预期的影响随时间和跨主题。作为一个整体，这些研究提供了关于学习者如何有效地抽象和表达大思想以及如何利用这些思想作为理解学习内容的框架的广义知识。随着研究的发展，正在开发两种经过研究测试的生物学课程原型：以能源为中心的四分之一学年DSM生物学课程；以及一个以自然选择为中心的八年DSM部门。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发新的创新和方法，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、技术、工程和数学的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为项目提供了理论和实证依据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project addresses the pressing need to more effectively organize STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teaching and learning around “big ideas” that run through science disciplines. This need is forcefully advanced by policy leaders including the National Research Council and the College Board. They point out that learning is more effective when students organize and link information within a consistent knowledge framework, which is what big ideas should provide. Unfortunately, finding ways to teach big ideas effectively—so they become useful as knowledge frameworks— is a significant challenge. Deep structure modeling (DSM), the innovation advanced in this project, is designed to meet this challenge in the context of high school biology. In DSM, students learn a big idea as the underlying, or “deep” structure of a set of examples that contain the structure, but with varying outward details. As learners begin to apprehend the deep structure (i.e., the big idea) within the examples, they use the tools and procedures of scientific modeling to express and develop it. According to theories of learning that undergird DSM, the result of this process should be a big idea that is flexible, meaningful, and easy to express, thus providing an ideal framework for making sense of new information learners encounter (i.e., learning with the big idea). To the extent that this explanation is born out in rigorous research tests and within authentic curriculum materials, it contributes important knowledge about how teaching and learning can be organized around big ideas, and not only for deep structural modeling but for other instructional approaches as well. This project has twin research and prototype development components. Both are taking place in the context of high school biology, in nine classrooms across three districts, supporting up to 610 students. The work focuses on three design features of DSM: (1) embedding model source materials with intuitive, mechanistic ideas; (2) supporting learners to abstract those ideas as a deep structure shared by a set of sources; and (3) representing this deep structure efficiently within the model. In combination, these features support students to understand an abstract, intuitively rich, and efficient knowledge structure that they subsequently use as a framework to interpret, organize, and link disciplinary content. A series of five research studies build on one another to develop knowledge about whether and how the design features bring about these anticipated effects. Earlier studies in the sequence are small-scale classroom experiments randomly assigning students to either deep structural modeling or to parallel, non modeling controls. Measures discriminate for the anticipated effects during learning and on posttests. Later studies use qualitative methods to carefully trace the anticipated effects over time and across topics. As a group, these studies are contributing generalized knowledge of how learners can effectively abstract and represent big ideas and how these ideas can be leveraged as frameworks for learning content with understanding. Two research-tested biology curriculum prototypes are being developed as the studies evolve: a quarter-year DSM biology curriculum centered on energy; and an eighth-year DSM unit centered on natural selection. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics by preK-12 students and teachers, through the research and development of new innovations and approaches. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for the projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.